Lilian hung up the receiver, smiling. And she continued to smile as she left the room and went to her own room and took her street things out of the cupboard and put them on. Nothing could have been more banal, more ordinary, and nothing more exquisite and romantic than the telephone conversation. The secret charm of it was inexplicable to her.... She saw him standing in the blue-and-crimson pyjamas by the bedside, a form distinguished and powerful.... She revelled in his gratitude. How nice of him to ask her name so that he might thank her personally! He did not care to thank a nameless employee. He wanted to thank _somebody_. And now she was somebody to him. Perhaps she had not been well-advised to give him her Christian name. The word, however, had come out of itself. Moreover, she liked her Christian name, and she liked nice people to know it. She certainly ought not to have said "that" about his not turning over and going to sleep again. No. There was something "common" in it. But he had accepted the freedom in the right spirit, had not taken advantage of it. She extinguished the gas-stove, restored the stolen typewriter, loosed the catch of the outer door, banged the door after her, and descended, holding the foolscap envelope in her shabbily-gloved hand. The forsaken solitude of the office was behind her. Outside, an icy mist floated over wet pavements in the first dim, sinister unveiling of the London day! Lilian wore a thick, broad, woollen scarf which comforted her neck and bosom, and gave to beholders the absurd illusion that she was snugly enveloped; but the assaulting cold took her in the waist, and she shivered. Her feet began to feel damp immediately. There was the old watchman peeping out of his sentry-box by his glowing brazier! He recognized her quickly enough, and without a movement of the gnarled face held up her matchbox as a sign of the bond between them. How ridiculous to have classed him with burglars! She threw her head back and gave him a proud, bright and rather condescendingly gracious smile.