Michael shook his head. He must go home. “Aren’t you coming down West a bit?” asked Drake, in disappointment. “The night’s still young.” But Michael was not to be persuaded. “Well, don’t let’s lose sight of each other now we’ve met. What’s your club? I’ve just joined the Primrose myself. Not a bad little place. You get a rare good one-and-sixpenny lunch. You ought to join. Or perhaps you’re already suited?” “I belong to the Bath,” said Michael. “Oh, of course, if you’re suited, that’s all right. But any time you want to join the Primrose just let me know and I’ll put you up. The sub isn’t really very much. Guinea a year.” Michael thanked him and escaped as quickly as he could. Outside even in Oxford Street the air was full of summer, and the cool people sauntering under the sapphirine sky were as welcome to his vision as if he had waked from a fever. His head was throbbing with the heat of the music-hall, and the freshness of night-air was delicious. He called a hansom and told the driver to go to Blackfriars Bridge, and from there slowly along the Embankment to Cheyne Walk. For a time he leaned back in the cab, thinking of nothing, barely conscious of golden thoroughfares, of figures in silhouette against the glitter, and of the London roar rising and falling. Presently in the quiet of the shadowy cross-streets he began to appreciate what seemed the terrible importance to himself of Drake’s news. “It concerns me,” he began to reiterate aloud. “It concerns me—me—me. It’s useless to think that it doesn’t. It concerns me.” Then a more ghastly suggestion whispered itself. How should he ever know that he was not primarily responsible? The idea came over him with sickening intensity; and upright now he saw in the cracked mirrors of the cab a face blanched, a forehead clammy with sweat, and over his shoulder like a goblin the wraith of Lily. It was horrible to see so distorted that beautiful memory which time had etherealized out of a reality, until of her being nothing had endured but a tenuous image of earliest love. Now under the shock of her degradation he must be dragged back by this goblin to face his responsibility. He must behold again close at hand her shallow infidelity. He must assure himself of her worthlessness, hammer into his brain that from the beginning she had merely trifled with him. This must be established for the sake of his conscience. Where the devil was this driver going? “I told you down the Embankment,” Michael shouted through the trap. “I can’t go down the Embankment before I gets there, can I, sir?” the cabman asked reproachfully.