And since he did not see Louie by the folding door, Louie knew that in his former passings and repassings he could not have seen her either.
He disappeared. The Soames girl was waiting by the door, evidently for him. No doubt he was going to see her home. Probably she would have preferred the other, the little cad with the red waistcoat, but she had the lion——
He returned, with his hat on, and they left together.
But what had brought that sudden ache into Louie's breast? Mr. Jeffries was nothing to her. If his face shone, Louie's heart need not therefore ache. What ailed her?
Unmasked, as alive to things within herself now as she had just been to things outside herself, she sat, deeply wondering.
Against the wall at her left hand there stood a tall stationery cupboard. It had glazed doors, and the pale student called Richardson, coming up a moment ago to put his exercise-book back into its place, had left one of the doors open. The door moved on its hinges back into its place. With its motion there swung slowly into Louie's view the reflection of the grimy chandelier with its three naked gas-jets.
Was it this that reminded her of the night when she had swept out of Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's French window with the yellow-shaded standard lamp mirrored in its pane?
It had been on that night——
Suddenly her eyes closed, as if closed eyes could have shut out a mental picture. Her lips trembled—voicelessly they shaped a name.
It was the name of Roy.