Curious, she said no more!  After a moment she sat up and took a sweet.

George saw, in a far corner, Jules Defourcambault talking very quietly to Irene Wheeler, whose lackadaisical face had become ingenuous and ardent as she listened to him under the shelter of the dazzling music.  George felt himself to be within the sphere of unguessed and highly perturbing forces.

III

He left early.  Lucas seemed to regard his departure as the act of a traitor, but he insisted on leaving.  And in spite of Lucas’s great social success he inwardly condescended to Lucas.  Lucas was not a serious man and could not comprehend seriousness.  George went because he had to go, because the power of an idea drove him forth.  He had no intention of sleeping.  He walked automatically through dark London, and his eyes, turned within, saw nothing of the city.  He did not walk quickly—­he was too preoccupied to walk quickly—­yet in his brain he was hurrying, he had not a moment to lose.  The goal was immensely far off.  His haste was as absurd and as fine as that of a man who, starting to cross Europe on foot, must needs run in order to get out of Calais and be fairly on his way.

At Russell Square he wondered whether he would be able to get into the office.  However, there was still a light in the basement, and he rang the house-bell.  The housekeeper’s daughter, a girl who played at being parlourmaid in the afternoons and brought bad tea and thick bread-and-butter to the privileged in the office, opened the front door with bridling exclamations of astonishment.  She had her best frock on; her hair was in curling-pins; she smelt delicately of beer; the excitement of the Sunday League excursion and of the evening’s dalliance had not quite cooled in this respectable and experienced young creature of central London.  She was very feminine and provocative and unparlourmaidish, standing there in the hall, and George passed by her as callously as though she had been a real parlourmaid on duty.  She had to fly to her mother for the key of the office.  Taking the key from the breathless, ardent little thing, he said that he would see to the front door being properly shut when he went out.  That was all.  Her legitimate curiosity about his visit had to go to bed hungry.

In the office he switched on the lights in Haim’s cubicle, in the pupils’ room, and in the principals’ room.  He enjoyed the illumination and the solitude.  He took deep breaths.  He walked about.  After rummaging for the sketches and the printed site-plan of the town hall projected by the northern city, he discovered them under John Orgreave’s desk.  He moved them to Mr. Enwright’s desk, which was the best one, and he bent over them rapturously.  Yes, the idea of entering for the competition himself was a magnificent idea.  Strange that it should have occurred not to him, but to Lois!  A disconcerting girl, Lois!  She had said that he looked twenty-five.