His thoughts had stolen away. He forgot Morris Barnes and the sordid mystery of which he was the centre. He remembered only the compelling cause which was driving him towards the solution of it. The night was warm, and he walked slowly, his hands behind him, and ever before his eyes the shadowy image of the girl who had brought so many strange sensations into his somewhat uneventful life. Would he ever see her, he wondered, without the light of trouble in her eyes, with colour in her cheeks, and joy in her tone? He thought of her violet-rimmed eyes, her hesitating manner, her air always as of one who walked hand in hand with fear. She was not meant for these things! Her lips and eyes were made for laughter; she was, after all, only a girl. If he could but lift the cloud! And then he looked upwards and saw her--leaning from the little iron balcony, and looking out into the cool night. He half stopped. She did not move. It was too dark to see her features, but as he looked upwards a strange idea came to him. Was it a gesture or some unspoken summons which travelled down to him through the semi-darkness? He only knew, as he turned and entered the flat, that a new chapter of his life was opening itself out before him. CHAPTER XIX DESPERATE WOOING Wrayson felt, from the moment he crossed the threshold of the room, that he had entered an atmosphere charged with elusive emotion. He was not sure of himself or of her as she turned slowly to greet him. Only he was at once conscious that something of that change in her which he had prophetically imagined was already shining out of her eyes. She was at once more natural and further removed from him. "I am glad," she said simply. "I wanted to say good-bye to you." He was stunned for a moment. He had not imagined this. She nodded. "Good-bye!" he repeated. "You are going away?" "To-morrow. Oh! I am glad. You don't know how glad I am." She swept past him and sank into an easy-chair. She wore a black velveteen evening dress, cut rather high, without ornament or relief of any sort, and her neck gleamed like polished ivory from which creeps always a subtle shade of pink. Her hair was parted in the middle and brushed back in little waves, her eyes were full of fire, and her face was no longer passive. Beautiful she had seemed to him before, but beautiful with a sort of impersonal perfection. She was beautiful now in her own right, the beauty of a woman whom nature has claimed for her own, who acknowledges her heritage. The fear-frozen subjectivity in which he had yet found enough to fascinate him had passed away. He felt that she was a stranger. "Always," she murmured, "I shall think of London as the city of dreadful memories. I should like to be going to set my face eastwards or westwards until I was so far away that even memory had perished. But that is just where the bonds tell, isn't it?"