"Good afternoon!" said John, turning away.
He moved towards the door of the room, feeling much less assurance than he had felt when he came into it.
"If you care to send in some articles for page six," Mr. Clotworthy added, "I'd be glad to see them!"
"Thank you," said John.
"Not at all," the editor replied without glancing up.
He left the Daily Sensation office, and walked towards Charing Cross. A queer depression had settled upon his spirits. Hinde had treated him as if he were mentally deficient, and he knew that Mr. Clotworthy and Tarleton, particularly Tarleton, regarded him with coldness, but he was not deeply affected by their disapproval. Nevertheless, depression possessed him. He felt that Eleanor would fail to keep her appointment. Quietly considered, there seemed to be no reason why she should keep it. She knew absolutely nothing of him except what he had told her while she leaned out of the window. How was she to know that he was speaking the truth? What right had he to expect her to pay any heed to him at all? Dreary, drizzling thoughts poured through his mind. He felt as certain that his novel would not be published as he felt that Eleanor would not be at the bookstall at Charing Cross station when he arrived there. The tragedy on which he was working had seemed to him to be a very marvellous play, but now he thought it was too poor to be worth finishing. He had been in London for what was quite a long time, but he had achieved nothing. He had not even written the music-hall sketch for the Creams. He had not earned a farthing during the time that he had been in London. All the exaltation which had filled him as he walked along the Bayswater Road on the previous night, with his mind full of Eleanor and love and starshine and moonlight and gleaming streets and trees hanging with mist and friendliness for all men, had gone clean out of him. Fleet Street was a dirty, ill-ventilated alley full of scuffling men and harassed women. London itself was a great angry thing, a place of distrust and contention, where no one ever offered a friendly greeting to a stranger. He would go to Charing Cross station and he would stand patiently in front of the bookstall, but Eleanor would not come to meet him. He would stand there, dumb and uncomplaining, and no one of the hurrying crowd of people would turn to him and say, "You're in trouble. I'm sorry!" They would neither know nor care. They would be too busy catching trains. He would stand there for an hour, for two hours ... until his legs began to ache with the pain of standing in one place for a long time ... and then, when it was apparent that waiting was useless and he had, perhaps, aroused the suspicions of policemen and railway porters concerning his purpose in loitering thus so persistently in front of the bookstall, he would go home in his misery to a contemptuous Hinde!...
II
And while these bitter thoughts poured through his mind, he entered Charing Cross station, and there in front of the bookstall was Eleanor Moore. The bitter thoughts poured out of his mind in a rapid flood. He felt so certain that his novel would be published that he could almost see it stacked on the bookstall behind Eleanor. He would finish the tragedy that week and in a short while England would be acclaiming him as a great dramatist!... He hurried towards her and held out his hand, and she shyly took it.
"Have you been here long?" he anxiously asked.
"No," she answered, "I've only just come!"