The following morning Mr. Williams behaved exactly as usual, and made no reference whatever to his suggestion of a holiday. Elsie, rather anxious and affronted, took advantage of a late call from a client to leave the office at six o’clock exactly, without returning into her employer’s room to announce her departure as she usually did. On her way to the crowded Tube station she was followed and accosted by a strange man. This adventure had become a common one to Elsie, but a certain recklessness pervaded her that evening, and when he urged her to come and sit in the park, under the cool of the trees, she went with him. He was a man of thirty-five or so, with a miserable, haunted, disease-ravaged face, and he began almost at once to pour out to her a long story of his wife’s treachery, of which he had just made the discovery. “I’ve never looked at another girl,” he kept on saying. “I’ve never spoken to one the way I’ve spoken to you to-night. But you remind me of her, in a way, and I knew you’d be all right, and sorry for a poor devil who’s been fooled.” Elsie hardly listened to him, but she let him put his arm round her waist, and as his caresses became more violent and eager, she again felt that instinctive conviction that it was to such an end that she had been created. These physical contacts only, brought her to the fullness of self-expression. At last she realised that her companion was muttering a request that he might go home with her. “What do you take me for?” Elsie asked furiously. “I’m a respectable girl, I am.” He became maudlin and begged her to forgive him, and she sank back again into his embrace, appeased at once. At last, when the park gates were closing, she roused herself and insisted that if he wanted to go on talking to her they must go somewhere and have supper. The man seemed too dazed and wretched to understand her, but when Elsie, rendered prudent by certain previous experiences, asked whether he had any money, he drew out a handful of loose silver. “That’s all right, then,” she said, relieved, and took him to a cheap and very popular restaurant. Elsie drank cocoa and ate sweet cakes, and her escort, leaning heavily on the marble-topped table, continued his low, maundering recitation of self-pity. She had very little idea of what he was talking about. She liked the restaurant and enjoyed her cakes, and the occasional contact between herself and the unknown man satisfied her for the time being. When they left the restaurant, Elsie directed him to the omnibus that would take her nearest to her own suburb, and they climbed to the top of it, and sat in close proximity on the narrow seat all through the long drive.