"Let's stroll up to the Plaza and have tea."
They went out, turned east and came into the Avenue, where, the afternoon being fine, one million people were methodically stepping on each other's heels. However, these were people without existence, even when they jostled into one.
The moment they were out of earshot of the listening clerk, Canning said, looking straight in front of him:
"Haven't you missed me at all, Carlisle?"
"Oh, yes! I seem to have done hardly anything else."
"I've been learning your name, you see," said Canning, after five steps in silence. "You won't mind?... Miss Heth would be a sham, after thinking nothing but Carlisle all these weeks."
She said that she didn't mind. His presence here beside her seemed to fill every reach and need of her being: here was what her soul had cried for, through all the empty days. It did not seem that she could ever mind anything any more....
"I'm very lucky to see you," she went on, quite naturally, "for I'm going back home to-night. Your six months' sentence isn't quite up yet, is it? Is it business that brings you?"
"What do you call business? Of course I've come," said he, "only to see you."
He went on, after a glorious pause: "And this is the second time--or is it the fourth or fifth? Did you happen to hear of me at Eva Payne's in January?"