“Look here—come to us whenever you like. Why, all this time, have you kept away? Wasn’t it what you were always telling us about your friends in Moscow that their houses were open to everyone always? You must miss that. Don’t be lonely whatever you do. There are ever so many of us, and some of us are sure to be in.”
“I will,” he said, stammering, “I will.”
“Henry’s always asking questions about Russia now. You’ve had a great effect upon him, and he wants you to tell him ever so much more. Then there’s Millie. She hasn’t seen you at all yet. You’ll like her so much. There’s Vincent coming back from Eton. Don’t be lonely or homesick. I know how miserable it is.”
They were in the Square by the Church outside her house; above the grey solid building the sky had been torn into streaming clouds of red and gold.
He took her hand and held it, and suddenly as she felt his pressure the colour flooded her face; she strove to beat it down—she could not. She tried to draw her hand away—but her own body, as though it knew better than she, defied her. She tried to speak—no words would come.
She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was indifferent, but her glance at him showed such triumph in his gaze that she began to tremble.
Then he released her hand. She said nothing—only with quick steps hurried into the house. He stood there until she had disappeared, then he turned round towards his rooms.
He strode down Victoria Street in such a flame of exultation as can flare this World into splendour only once or twice in a lifetime. It was the hour when the lights come out, and it seemed to him that he himself flung fire here, there, for all the world to catch, now high into a lamp-post, now low beneath some basement window, now like a cracker upon some distant trees, now, high, high into the very evening blue itself. The pavement, the broad street, the high, mysterious buildings caught and passed the flame from one to another.
An ancient newspaper man, ragged in a faded tail coat, was shouting “Finals! Finals! All the Finals!” but to Philip’s ear he was saying—“She cares for you! she cares for you! Praise God! What a world it is.”
He stumbled up the dark stairs of his house past the door from whose crevices there stole always the scent of patchouli, past the door, higher up, whence came, creeping up his stairs the suggestion of beef and cabbage, into his own dark lodging. His sitting-room had its windows still open and its blinds still up. The lamp in the street below flung its squares of white light upon his walls; papers on his table were blowing in the evening breeze, and the noise of the town climbed up, looked in through the open windows, fell away again, climbed up again in an eternal indifferent urgency. He was aware that a man stood by the window, a wavering shadow was spread against the lighted wall.