"None," she replied. "To tell the truth, I rather shrank from anything definite. 'The wind bloweth as it listeth.' Let us go on without end or purpose. That seems to me the ideal way."
"But we are bound to make a beginning. After that the game may play itself."
"Let us get away from the London we know; let us go to a romantic, wonderful London that we have never seen." She was almost echoing his thought. "We shall glide discreetly among the crowds as if we belonged to them."
"Then away!" he laughed. "To horse—or rather, to omnibus! Or is it to be hansom?"
"Everything in turn, and nothing long."
It was a cold day, yet though the sky was lightly clouded, the air was free from mist. As they stepped into the street a few patches of blue were visible, and a wintry sunshine filtered down with a pleasant sense of promise. The neighbouring houses were for the most part shuttered and silent, but the outlook on the great triangular space before them was cheerfully busy.
"How unlike the scene of your painting!" she exclaimed. "There is no suggestion of drama here, but just the average feeling of the London thoroughfare—busy people going their way, and a procession of omnibuses mixed up with carts and hansoms."
"Yet my own scene swims before my eyes—I have lived with it so long."
"You have still to live with it," she reminded him.
"If I do not die of it," he answered pleasantly. "Seriously, I came near to doing so."