Perhaps she had sent him an answer to his telegrams. He hurried back to Eden Row. As he came in sight of the tree-shadowed street, with the river gleaming along its length and the staid, sleepy houses lining its pavement, the calm normality of an orderly world again accused him. To have suggested to Eden Row a trip to America merely to see a girl would have sounded like an affront to its sanity. As he passed by Orchid Lodge, the carriage-and-pair was waiting for Mrs. Sheerug to come out. For fifteen years she had been going through the same curriculum of self-imposed duties--playing her harp, working at her tapestries, scattering her philanthropies. How could he say to her, “I’m going to America,” without stating an adequate reason? His mother met him in the hall. “Why, Teddy, back! What’s the matter? You didn’t send us warning.” “I got tired of roving,” he said. “Has anything come?” “Come! No. I forwarded your last letters to Glastonbury. I thought you were to be there this morning.” “So I was to have been, but--I changed my mind suddenly.” “You look awfully tired.” “I am.” He forced a laugh. “I haven’t slept. I drove all night for the fun of it. I think I’ll go and lie down.” In the room where he had passed his boyhood dreaming of her, he sat down to wait for her message. He looked out of the window. How unaltered everything was, and yet how different! The pigeons fluttered. In the studio at the bottom of the garden he could make out the figure of his father, standing before his easel. Across the wall, Mr. Yaffon carried cans of water back and forth among his flowers. He remembered the great dread he had had that nothing would ever happen. And now it had happened--money, reputation, and at last Desire. He ought to be feeling immensely glad; he was in love--the make-believe passions of childhood on which he had fed his imagination were ended. The real thing had come. If he could only have one sign from her that she cared---- He listened. Every time he heard the bell ring he went out on to the landing and called, “Anything for me? What is it?” Afternoon lengthened out. He manufactured reasons for her silence. She had probably intended to telegraph him from Euston, but had been rushed at the last minute. She would do it from Liverpool before she sailed. That would mean that he would hear from her by seven. Anyway she had his flowers and she had his book--so many things to remind her of him. He pictured her curled up in a corner of the railway-carriage, blind to the flying country, deaf to what was going on about her, smiling over the pages of _Life Till Twenty-One_, and recognizing what poetry he had brought to his loving of her. She wouldn’t be hard on him any longer for his behavior on the ride from Glastonbury. She would understand why he hadn’t liked her to speak of love as though it were flirtation. Perhaps already she was feeling a little proud of him--nearly as proud as he felt of her.