"Perhaps," he said to himself, "I can't see the romance in things. Mebbe, Uncle Matthew could see more than I can!..."
His head ached more severely now, and he wandered into Tudor Street. A great rurr-rurr came from the cellars of the houses, and glancing into them, he could see big machines working, and he guessed that these were the engines that printed the newspapers. The thump of the presses, as they turned great rolls of white paper into printed sheets, seemed to beat inside his head, causing him pain with every stroke. He pressed his fingers, against his temples in an effort to relieve the ache, but it would not be relieved. "Oh!" he exclaimed aloud after one very sharp twinge, and then, as he spoke, he found himself before a gate and, heedless of what he was doing, he passed through it ... and found himself in an oasis in a desert of noise. The harsh sounds died down, the rurr-rurr-rurr of the machines ceased to trouble him, the scuffle and haste no longer offended his sense of decency. He was in a place of cool cloisters and wide green lawns. He could see young men in white flannels playing tennis ... in Ballyards it was called "bat and ball" ... and beyond the tennis-courts, he saw the shining river.
"What place is this?" he said to a man who went by.
"Temple Gardens!" the man replied.
He walked about the Gardens, delighting in the quiet and the coolness. Pigeons flew down from the roof of a house and began to pick bread-crumbs almost at his feet. There was a sweet noise of birds....
He looked at the names of the barristers painted on the doorways of the houses, and wondered which of them were judges. He wished he could see a judge in his crimson robes and his long, curly wig, coming out of the chambers, and while he wished for this splendid spectacle, he saw a barrister in his black gown and horse-hair wig, come down a narrow passage from the Strand and enter the doorway of one of the houses. He walked on into Pump Court and watched the sparrows washing themselves in the fountain where Tom Pinch met Ruth ... and while he watched them, his sense of loneliness returned to him. His head still ached and now his heart ached, too. Disappointment had come to him all day. He was alone in a city full of people who knew nothing of him and cared nothing for him. And his heart was aching. The peace of Pump Court only served to make him more aware of the ache in his head. As he dipped his hand in the water of the fountain, he wished that he could go round a corner and meet Uncle William or Mr. Cairnduff or the minister or even Aggie Logan ... meet someone whom he knew!...
"I'd give the world for a cup of tea," he said to himself suddenly, and then, "I wonder could I find that place where I saw the girl. Mebbe she'd be there again!..."
He looked about him in an indeterminate way. Then he moved from the fountain in the direction of the Strand. "I can try anyway!" he said.
VIII
The girl was sitting at a large table in a corner of the restaurant, and he saw with joy that there was a vacant seat immediately opposite to her. He looked at her as he sat down, but she gave no sign of recognition. He had hoped that their encounter earlier in the day would have entitled him to a smile from her, but her features remained unrelaxed, although he knew that she was aware of him and remembered him. Her eyes and his had met, and he had been ready to answer her smile with another smile, but she averted her eyes from his stare and looked down at her plate. What eyes she had ... grey at one moment and blue at another as her face turned in the light! When she looked downwards, he could see long lashes fringing her eyelids, and when she looked up, the changing colour of her irises and the blue tinge that suffused the cornea, caused him to think of her eyes as pools of light. Her face was pale, and in repose it had an appearance of puzzled pathos that made him feel that he must instantly offer comfort to her, and he would have done so had not her nervous reticence prevented him. What would she do if he were to speak to her? There was an illustrated paper lying close to her plate. He leant across the table and, pointing to the paper, said, "Are you using that?"