If there is anything in telepathy; if thoughts, by reason of their concentration, can be borne from one mind to another utterly unconscious of them, then what followed his exclamation might well have been an example of it.  For a moment the girl buried her face in her hands.  He could see her pressing her fingers into the sockets of her eyes.  Then, sitting upright, she stretched her arms above her head.  Every action was expressive of her exhaustion.  The glancing at her watch, the critical inspection of the bundle of papers, yet untyped, that lay beside her on the desk; all these various movements were like the gestures of a dumb show.  Was she going to give in?  From the size of the bundle of papers which she had looked at, there was apparently still a great deal of work left for her to do.

The thought passed across his mind that he would give her until he had counted twenty; if she showed no signs of moving by that time, he decided to wait no longer.

One—­two—­three—­four—­she stood up from the desk.  He still watched her until he had seen her place the wooden cover over the machine; then he crossed to the other side of the road and began walking up and down the pavement, passing the door of Bonsfield & Co.  About every twenty yards or so, he turned and passed it again.

Five minutes elapsed.  At last he heard the door of the premises close—­the noise of it rattled in the street; then he turned and faced her as she came towards him.

Her head was down; her feet were moving quickly, tapping on the pavement.  He prepared himself to speak to her, his hand getting ready to lift his hat.  If she had given him half the encouragement that he imagined he required, he would have found courage; but without lifting her head, as though she were utterly unconscious of his presence, she hurried by in the direction of Bedford Street and the West.

Was that to be the end of it?  Had he waited that full quarter of an hour in the drizzling rain for nothing?  The man of fixed intent is hardly beaten so easily as that.  There was no definite evil purpose in his mind.  He was caught in that mood when a man must talk to some one, and a woman for preference.  The waiting of fifteen minutes in that sluggish atmosphere had only intensified it.  The fact that in the first moment of opportunity his courage had failed had had no power to move him from his purpose, or to change the prompting of his mood.

As soon as she had passed him on the pavement, he turned resolutely and followed her.

CHAPTER II

All life is an adventure, even the most monotonous moments of it.  It is impossible to walk the streets of London without being conscious of that spirit of the possibility of happenings which makes life tolerable.  It was not to feast their eyes upon unknown worlds, or drench their hands in a stream of gold, that the old marauders of England set forth upon the high seas.  Assuredly it must have been, in the hearts of them, that love of adventure, that desire for the happenings of strange things which spurred them on to face God in the wind, to dare Him in the tempest, to brave Him even into the unknown.