“Sorry! But it’s all a mistake.” He tapped on the window until the taxi stopped. “I’m going to get out. You take this on home. Give this to the man. Kiss me good-bye and part friends! You have enjoyed yourself, I hope. Good-bye, Gracie.”
He thrust a note into her hand, opened the door and walked rapidly away. The driver waited and then came to the window for orders; he was lazily amused to see a girl sitting forward with her cloak on the floor and her hands locked between her knees, staring in bewilderment at the vanishing form of her late companion. Her lips were parted, her eyes strained; she shivered and pulled the cloak over her bare shoulders and back; the movement seemed to break a spell and she roused to give an address. As the taxi turned, she took a last look over her shoulder, then dropped her head between her hands to think; at the same moment the driver looked around with a leer at her expression of perplexity, in which a wave of disappointment was succeeded by a wave of thankfulness and then a second wave of disappointment. She chewed petulantly at a corner of a crumpled handkerchief, then hid her face and began to cry.
Gaymer walked south, girding at himself. Nothing that he could do was right... He was mercifully rid of a woman whom he might well have strangled before morning. But he was not rid of the maddening loneliness which had tortured him all day, racking him with an extra twist every time that he saw a man and girl perambulating arm-in-arm....
At two o’clock he found himself once more in Ryder Street, pacing up and down for no better reason than that he had already paced up and down there for so many hours. Ivy could not be there at two o’clock... He turned into St. James’ Street and crossed the Park to Eaton Place, led thereto by instinct and well knowing that he would find no satisfaction in staring at a blind window. It was more than time for him to be in bed, but he could not muster courage to enter his flat. Too many reminders of Ivy lingered to haunt him in each derisory void room. A game thrown away through carelessness... He could have held her; granted opportunity, he could recapture her as easily as he had captured the yellow woman with the silly name at the counter-jumpers’ carnival off Tottenham Court Road....
It was a pity to let that young Jew escape without a hiding....
A pity that he had not thrashed that errand-boy....
Gracie was not the girl that he wanted, but she was better than nothing. And he had let her go....
Three o’clock....
Gaymer walked to Jermyn Street in the grey chill of a summer morning. He did not greatly want a Turkish bath, but it would be good for him after the indifferent liquor that he had been consuming all day. And he could sleep for a few hours. And Jermyn Street was convenient for the parson-poet’s flat....
Before he began the bath he must remember to look up the fellow’s address in the directory....