quick flight with her, for an undefined purpose, to an undefined spot; and he was glad at that moment to have his back turned to the people in the street, because his face suddenly grew red to the tips of his ears. Again and again, all the same, he indulged in the reflexion that spontaneous, uncultivated minds often have inventions, inspirations. Moreover, whether Millicent should have any or not, he might at least feel the firm roundness of her arms about him. He didn’t exactly know what good this would do him or what door it would open, but he should like it. The sensation was not one he could afford to defer, but the nearest moment at which he should be able to enjoy it would be that evening. He had thrown over everything, but she herself would be busy all day; nevertheless it would be a gain, it would be a kind of foretaste, to see her earlier, to have three words with her. He wrestled with the temptation to go into her haberdasher’s, because he knew she didn’t like it—he had tried it once of old; as the visits of gentlemen even when ostensible purchasers (there were people watching about who could tell who was who) compromised her in the eyes of her employers. This was not an ordinary case, however; and though he hovered a long time, undecided, embarrassed, half-ashamed, at last he went in as by the force of the one, the last, sore personal need left him. He would just make an appointment with her, and a glance of the eye and a single word would suffice. He remembered his way through the labyrinth of the shop; he knew her department was on the upper floor. He walked through the place, which was crowded, as if he had as good a right as any one else; and as he had entertained himself on rising with putting on his holiday garments, in which he made such a tidy figure, he was not suspected of any purpose more nefarious than that of looking for some nice thing to give a lady. He ascended the stairs and found himself in a large room where made-up articles were ranged and where, though there were twenty people in it, a glance told him he shouldn’t find Millicent. She was perhaps in the next one, into which he passed by a wide opening. Here also were numerous purchasers, most of them ladies; the men were but three or four and the disposal of the wares all committed to neat young women attired in black dresses with long trains. It struck him at first that the young woman he sought was even here not within sight, and he was turning away to look elsewhere when he suddenly noted a tall gentleman who stood in the middle of the room and who was none other than Captain Sholto. It next became plain to him that the person standing upright before the Captain, as still as a lay-figure and with her back turned to himself, was the object of his own quest. In spite of her averted face he instantly “spotted” Millicent; he knew her shop-attitude, the dressing of her hair behind and the long grand lines of her figure draped in the last new thing.