Wandering aimlessly through the parks, I sat for a time by the Serpentine. The nerves of all that had happened in the past five years were cut. If I had married Ruthita, would she have been happy? The thought of marrying her was just as impossible to me now as it had been when Grandmother Cardover had mentioned it at Ransby. And yet, at a time when I had been most sensitive of injustice, I had been unjust to her---- And now she was going to be a mother--little Ruthita, who seemed to me herself so much a child! When I came into Whitehall, the pale twilight of spring still hovered above house-tops; from streets the flare of London steamed up. The opal of the sky reflected the marigold-yellow of illumined windows; arc-lights, like ox-eye daisies, stared above the grass of the dusk. I made my way to my club and sank into a chair, aimlessly skimming the papers, reading scarcely a line. Few people were about; the room was empty save for one other loiterer. Spring in the streets was calling. The man strolled up to me, holding an illustrated weekly in his hand. I knew him slightly and nodded. “Writing a book on the Renaissance, ar’n’t you? Here’s something a bit in your line. Funny how Paris’ll go mad over a thing like that!” He smacked the page. “Girl comes from nowhere. Her lover writes a play--that’s the story. There’s a mystery. The play’s difficult to understand, so it must be brainy. Now I like a thing that don’t need no explanation: Marie Lloyd, the Empire, musical comedy--that’s my cut.” He tossed me the weekly and turned on his heel to walk out. Annoyed at being disturbed, I glanced down irritably. From a full-page illustration the face of Fiesole smiled up. CHAPTER V--LA FIESOLE It was ridiculous this curiosity, but I knew how to explain it--it grew out of my life’s great emptiness since I had listened to Ruthita’s confession. She had made me realize as never before how I had muddled my chances of happiness. I had heard nothing from Vi in all these years and now I had learnt that, without knowing it, I might have had Ruthita. My interests had lost their charm; I wanted an excuse to leave my work. This matter of Fiesole had cropped up, so here I was on my way to Paris, more for the sake of something to do than anything else. I had not the remotest intention of renewing her acquaintance. Unseen by her, I would watch her from some corner of the theatre, and then slip back to London. There would be piquancy in the thought that I had gone to see her for old time’s sake, and that she would never know about it. As for speaking to her, that would be an insult after what had happened at Venice. Probably she hated me. She ought to, if she did not. Though I smiled at myself, truth to tell, I was rather pleased to find I could still be so impulsive; romance in me was not dead after all these years of uneventful waiting. This journey was the folly of a sentimental boy--not the cynical act of a man of the world.