Yet that abandonment of the walks insisted on looking mean to him. And she would think it mean. Which was very much worse, somehow. _Why_ mean? Why should she think it mean? He grew angry again. The portly museum policeman who had been watching him furtively, wondering why a student should sit in front of the "Sacrifice of Lystra" and gnaw lips and nails and moustache, and scowl and glare at that masterpiece, saw him rise suddenly to his feet with an air of resolution, spin on his heel, and set off with a quick step out of the gallery. He looked neither to the right nor the left. He passed out of sight down the staircase. "Gone to get some more moustache to eat, I suppose," said the policeman reflectively.... "One 'ud think something had bit him." After some pensive moments the policeman strolled along down the gallery and came to a stop opposite the cartoon. "Figgers is a bit big for the houses," said the policeman, anxious to do impartial justice. "But that's Art. I lay '_e_ couldn't do anything ... not arf so good." CHAPTER XVIII. THE FRIENDS OF PROGRESS MEET. The night next but one after this meditation saw a new order in the world. A young lady dressed in an astrachan-edged jacket and with a face of diminished cheerfulness marched from Chelsea to Clapham alone, and Lewisham sat in the flickering electric light of the Education Library staring blankly over a business-like pile of books at unseen things. The arrangement had not been effected without friction, the explanation had proved difficult. Evidently she did not appreciate the full seriousness of Lewisham's mediocre position in the list. "But you have _passed_ all right," she said. Neither could she grasp the importance of evening study. "Of course I don't know," she said judicially; "but I thought you were learning all day." She calculated the time consumed by their walk as half an hour, "just one half hour;" she forgot that he had to get to Chelsea and then to return to his lodgings. Her customary tenderness was veiled by an only too apparent resentment. First at him, and then when he protested, at Fate. "I suppose it _has_ to be," she said. "Of course, it doesn't matter, I suppose, if we _don't_ see each other quite so often," with a quiver of pale lips.