"Very well," answered Cleve, without looking back. "Come to my lodgings, Sedley—we'll smoke, shall we? I've got some capital cigars."
"I don't care. I'm going on also."
"What a delicious night!" exclaimed Tom Sedley, looking up at the stars. "Suppose we walk—it isn't far."
"I don't care—let us walk," said Cleve.
So walk they did. It was not far to Cleve's lodgings, in a street off Piccadilly. The young men had walked rather silently; for, as it seemed to Sedley, his companion was not in a temper to talk a great deal, or very pleasantly.
"And what about this gray woman? Did you ever follow it up? Did the romance take fire where it ought? Is it a mutual flame?" asked Cleve, like a tired man who feels he must say something, and does not care what. "I don't think you mentioned her since the day you showed me that Beatrice Cenci, over your d——d chimney-piece."
"Of course I'd have told you if there had been anything to tell," said Tom.
"They haven't been at Malory since?"
"Oh! no—frightened away—you'll never see them there again. There's nothing absolutely in it, and never was, not even an adventure. Nothing but the little that happened long ago—and you know all about that," continued Sedley. "She's a wonderfully beautiful creature, though; I wish you saw her again, Cleve. You're such a clever fellow, you'd make a poem of her, or something—she'd bring you back to the days of chivalry, and that style of thing. I'm a sort of fellow, you know, that feels a lot, and I think, I think some too; but I haven't the knack of saying it, or writing it—I'm not particularly good at anything; but I went that morning, you know, into the Refectory—you know—there are such a lot of stairs, and long places and doors, it makes a fellow quite foolish—and there she was—don't you remember?—I wish I could describe her to you gardening there with her gloves on."
"Don't try—you've tried so often—there's a good fellow; but just tell me her name?" said Cleve, looking straight before him, above the lamps and the slanting slates and chimneys, into the deep sky, where brilliantly, spite of London smoke, shone the clear sad moon.