An immense and memorable joke. Lewisham plunged recklessly--orientally--into an awe-inspiring place with mitred napkins. They lunched on cutlets--stripped the cutlets to the bone--and little crisp brown potatoes, and they drank between them a whole half bottle of--some white wine or other, Lewisham selected in an off-hand way from the list. Neither of them had ever taken wine at a meal before. One-and-ninepence it cost him, Sir, and the name of it was Capri! It was really very passable Capri--a manufactured product, no doubt, but warming and aromatic. Ethel was aghast at his magnificence and drank a glass and a half. Then, very warm and comfortable, they went down by the Tower, and the Tower Bridge with its crest of snow, huge pendant icicles, and the ice blocks choked in its side arches, was seasonable seeing. And as they had had enough of shops and crowds they set off resolutely along the desolate Embankment homeward. But indeed the Thames was a wonderful sight that year! ice-fringed along either shore, and with drift-ice in the middle reflecting a luminous scarlet from the broad red setting sun, and moving steadily, incessantly seaward. A swarm of mewing gulls went to and fro, and with them mingled pigeons and crows. The buildings on the Surrey side were dim and grey and very mysterious, the moored, ice-blocked barges silent and deserted, and here and there a lit window shone warm. The sun sank right out of sight into a bank of blue, and the Surrey side dissolved in mist save for a few insoluble, spots of yellow light, that presently became many. And after our lovers had come under Charing Cross Bridge the Houses of Parliament rose before them at the end of a great crescent of golden lamps, blue and faint, halfway between the earth and sky. And the clock on the Tower was like a November sun. It was a day without a flaw, or at most but the slightest speck. And that only came at the very end. "Good-bye, dear," she said. "I have been very happy to-day." His face came very close to hers. "Good-bye," he said, pressing her hand and looking into her eyes. She glanced round, she drew nearer to him. "_Dearest_ one," she whispered very softly, and then, "Good-bye." Suddenly he became unaccountably petulant, he dropped her hand. "It's always like this. We are happy. _I_ am happy. And then--then you are taken away...." There was a silence of mute interrogations. "Dear," she whispered, "we must wait." A moment's pause. "_Wait_!" he said, and broke off. He hesitated. "Good-bye," he said as though he was snapping a thread that held them together. CHAPTER XVI. MISS HEYDINGER'S PRIVATE THOUGHTS. The way from Chelsea to Clapham and the way from South Kensington to Battersea, especially if the former is looped about a little to make it longer, come very near to each other. One night close upon Christmas two friends of Lewisham's passed him and Ethel. But Lewisham did not see them, because he was looking at Ethel's face.