But not until he had seen the empty tea-cups in their position upon the table just as they had left them, the little piece of bread and butter she had half eaten, upon her plate; not until he had seen the empty chairs standing closely together as though repeating in whispers all the story of the City of Beautiful Nonsense which he had told her, did he come actually to realise that he had lost her--that he was alone. The minutes ticked wearily by as he sat there, staring at it all as though it were an empty stage at the end of a play, which the players had deserted. At the sound of footsteps mounting the stairs, he looked up. Then, as a knock fell upon the door, he started to his feet. She had come back! She could bear the parting no more than he! They were never to be parted! This loneliness was too unendurable, too awful to bear. In hurried strides, he reached the door and flung it open. There stood the little bailiff--_the great_ Mr. Chesterton--with a smile spreading agreeably over his solemn face. In those two hours of his absence, he had thought of three clever things--three! which, having just invented, he found to be in every way as good as that famous simile of Time and Tide. He was longing to say them. But when he saw the look on John’s face, he stopped. "Yer not expecting another young lady are yer?" he asked. John turned back despairingly into the room, making way for him to enter. He offered no reply to the little man’s remark. Mr. Chesterton closed the door behind him. "’Ave you ’ad a scrap?" he asked sympathetically. Now, sympathy from a bailiff, may be a very beautiful thing, but when the mind of a man is floundering in the nethermost pit, he has no need of it. John turned on him, his face changed, his whole expression altered. "You’ve come here to do your work, haven’t you?" he said thickly--"you’ve come here to take possession of any confounded thing you like. Well--take it! Take the whole blessed show! I don’t want to see a single thing in this room again." He strode to the door. The little man stood staring at him amazed. "You can rip every damned thing off the walls----" he went on wildly. "Make up your fifteen pounds whatever you do. Don’t stint yourself! For God’s sake don’t stint yourself!--Take every damned thing!" The door slammed. He was gone. It was half-past six. Payne and Welcome were just beginning to put up their shutters. John hurried into the side entrance and threw his ticket down on the counter. "I want that seventeen pounds," he said, and the ten-shilling-piece twisted a giddy dance on the counter by the side of the ticket, then sank down with a gentle ringing sound. The pawnbroker looked at him in amazement, then went to a little pigeon-hole and produced the packet of money. John snatched it up and went. They stared after him; then stared at one another. "He ain’t so far off it this time," said one.