III

With no clear plan as to his dinner he took her back to Alexandra Grove.  The dusk was far advanced.  Mounting the steps quickly Marguerite rang the bell.  There was no answer.  She pushed up the flap of the letter-aperture and looked within.

“Have you got your latchkey?” she asked, turning round on George.  “Father’s not come home—­his hat’s not hanging up.  He promised me certain that he would be here at six-thirty at the latest.  Otherwise I should have taken the big key.”

She did not show resentment against her father; nor was there impatience in her voice.  But she seemed to be firmly and impassively judging her father, as his equal, possibly even as somewhat his superior.  And George admired the force of her individuality.  It flattered him that a being so independent and so strong should have been so meltingly responsive to him in the cathedral.

An adventurous idea occurred to him in a flash and he impulsively adopted it.  His latchkey was in his pocket, but if the house door was once opened he would lose her—­he would have to go forth and seek his dinner and she would remain in the house; whereas, barred out of the house, she would be bound to him—­they would be thrust together into exquisite contingencies, into all the deep potentialities of dark London.

“Dash it!” he said, first fumbling in one waistcoat pocket, and then ledging the portfolio against a step and fumbling in both waistcoat pockets simultaneously.  “I must have left it in my other clothes.”

It is doubtful whether his conscience troubled him.  But he had a very exciting sense of risk and of romance and of rapture, as though he had done something wonderful and irremediable.

“Ah!  Well!” she murmured, instantly acquiescent, and without the least hesitation descended the steps.

How many girls (he demanded) would or could have made up their minds and faced the situation like that?  Her faculty of decision was simply masculine!  He looked at her in the twilight and she was inimitable, unparalleled.  And yet by virtue of the wet glistening of her eyes in the cathedral she had somehow become mystically his!  He. permitted himself the suspicion:  “Perhaps she guesses that I’m only pretending about the latchkey.”  The suspicion which made her an accessory to his crime did not lower her in his eyes.  On the contrary, the enchanting naughtiness with which it invested her only made her variety more intoxicant and perfection more perfect.  His regret was that the suspicion was not a certainty.

Before a word could be said as to the next move, a figure in a grey suit and silk hat, and both arms filled with packages, passed in front of the gate and then halted.

“Oh!  It’s Mr. Buckingham Smith!” exclaimed Marguerite.  “Mr. Buckingham Smith, we’re locked out till father comes.”  She completed the tale of the mishap, to George’s equal surprise and mortification.