"What is the matter with you to-day?" she said. "What spirit of dissatisfaction has got hold of you?"
"I am dissatisfied," he said, raising his hat, and brushing his hand back over his hair. Then he looked at her. "Why don't you help me?" he asked.
"How can I help you?" she answered. "I don't understand you."
"You ought to. I wish to goodness you did"—and then his face cleared. "But you will come again," he added, in the old way. "I shall expect you soon."
And so he let her go; and Ideala was glad, because an unpleasant jar was over. She did not trouble herself about his private worries; if he wished her to know he would tell her. Lorrimer had a temper—but then she had known that all along; and Lorrimer was Lorrimer—that was all about it.
CHAPTER XIX.
He let her go, somewhat bewildered, and not understanding herself or him, nor caring to understand, only happy, dangerously happy. The train bore her through an enchanted region of brightness and summer, and, although the power of thought was for the moment suspended, she was conscious of this, and her own delight was like the unreasoning pleasure of earth when the sun is upon it.
There was no carriage to meet her at the station, and she set off to walk home. It was the first time she had been alone on foot in the squalid disorderly streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog- looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and she would have thought so at any other time, but now she never saw it.
In a somewhat open and more lonely part of the road she met a tramp, a great rude, hulking, common fellow, with fine blue eyes. He stopped in the middle of the road and stared at Ideala as she came up to him, walking, as usual, with a slight undulating movement that made you think of a yacht in a breeze, her face up-raised and her lips parted. He took off his cap as she approached. The gesture attracted her attention, and, thinking he wanted to beg or ask some question, she stopped and looked at him inquiringly.
"Well, you are a nice lady!" he exclaimed.