that he might, if the mood took him, call at Cork Street and catch her before she left.  Having advanced thus far in the sketch of his intentions, he had decided that it would be a pity not to take precautions to encounter her in the street, assuming that she had already started but had not reached the theatre.  The chance of meeting her on her way was exceedingly small; nevertheless he would not miss it.  Hence his roundabout route; and hence his selection of the chaste as against the unchaste pavement of Coventry Street.  He knew very little of Christine’s professional arrangements, but he did know, from occasional remarks of hers, that owing to the need for economy and the difficulty of finding taxis she now always walked to the Promenade on dry nights, and that from a motive of self-respect she always took the south side of Piccadilly and the south side of Coventry Street in order to avoid the risk of ever being mistaken for something which she was not.

It was a dry night, but very cloudy.  Points of faint illumination, mysteriously travelling across the heavens and revealing the otherwise invisible cushioned surface of the clouds, alone showed that searchlights were at their work of watching over the heedless town.  Entertainments had drawn in the people from the streets; motor-buses were half empty; implacable parcels-vans, with thin, exhausted boys scarcely descried on their rear perches, forced the more fragile traffic to yield place to them.  Footfarers were few, except on the north side of Coventry Street, where officers, soldiers, civilians, police and courtesans marched eternally to and fro, peering at one another in the thick gloom that, except in the immediate region of a lamp, put all girls, the young and the ageing, the pretty and the ugly, the good-natured and the grasping, on a sinister enticing equality.  And they were all, men and women and vehicles, phantoms flitting and murmuring and hooting in the darkness.  And the violet glow-worms that hung in front of theatres and cinemas seemed to mark the entrances to unimaginable fastnesses, and the side streets seemed to lead to the precipitous edges of the universe where nothing was.

G.J. recognised Christine just beyond the knot of loiterers at the Piccadilly Tube.  The improbable had happened.  She was walking at what was for her a rather quick pace, purposeful and preoccupied.  For an instant the recognition was not mutual; he liked the uninviting stare that she gave him as he stopped.

“It is thou?” she exclaimed, and her dimly-seen face softened suddenly into a delighted, adoring smile.