To-day it was clear that Falk had caught his attention. He looked across the room at him with a queer defiant glance, something like Falk's own. Once it seemed that he had made up his mind to come over and speak to him. He half rose in his seat, then sank back again. But his eyes came round again and again to the corner where Falk was sitting. The Cathedral chimes had whispered twice in the room before Annie returned. "What is it you're wanting?" she asked. "Come outside and speak to me." "No, I can't do that. Father's watching." "Well, will you meet me one evening and have a talk?" "What about?" "Several things." "It isn't right, Mr. Brandon. What's a gentleman like you want with a girl like me?" "I only want us to get away a little from all this noise and filth." Suddenly she smiled. "Well, I don't mind if I do. After supper's a good time. Father goes up the town to play billiards. After eight." "When?" "What about to-morrow evening?" "All right. Where?" "Up to the Mill. Five minutes up from here." "I'll be there," he said. "Don't let father catch 'ee--that's all," she smiled down at him. "You'm a fule, Mr. Brandon, to bother with such as I." He said nothing and she walked away. Very shortly after, Davray got up from his seat and came over to Falk's corner. It was obvious that he had been drinking rather heavily. He was a little unsteady on his feet. "You're young Brandon, aren't you?" he asked. In ordinary times Falk would have told him to go to the devil, and there would have been a row, but to-day he was caught away so absolutely into his own world that any one could speak to him, any one laugh at him, any one insult him, and he would not care. He had been meditating for weeks the advance that he had just taken; always when one meditates for long over a risk it swells into gigantic proportions. So this had been; that simple sentence asking her to come out and talk to him had seemed an impossible challenge to every kind of fate, and now, in a moment, the gulf had been jumped...so easy, so strangely easy.... From a great distance Davray's words came to him, and in the dialogue that followed he spoke like a somnambulist. "Yes," he said, "my name's Brandon." "I knew, of course," said Davray. "I've seen you about." He spoke with great swiftness, the words tumbling over one another, not with eagerness, but rather with a kind of supercilious carelessness. "Beastly hole, isn't this? Wonder why one comes here. Must do something in this rotten town. I've drunk enough of this filthy beer. What do you say to moving out?" Falk looked up at him. "What do you say?" he asked. "Let's move out of this. If you're walking up the town I'll go with you." Falk was not conscious of the man, but it was quite true that he wanted to get out of the place now that his job in it was done. He got up without a word and began to push through the room. He was met near the door by Hogg.