For an hour or more he waited in the rain. It occurred to him that at least the woman was speaking the truth, for there was no light in either of the front rooms. The Grand Midland. . . . It was there that Widdup had seen them. He walked to Sackville Row at a great pace and straight into the hotel, where waiters and elderly commercial gentlemen stared at his wet clothes and his haggard face. He went into each of the dining-rooms and down the stairs to the Turkish lounge. Nowhere was Rosie or Griffin to be seen. A search of this kind was ridiculous, but every moment that the agony was extended made him more desperately anxious. He walked back in the drizzle to Prince Albert’s Place and paced the pavement under the black walls of the warehouses. The road was deserted. There was no sound in it at all but the dripping of water from some neglected spout. He walked up and down in the shadow, and as he walked he became conscious of something like a personality in the faces of the long row of lodging-houses, something sinister, as though their shuttered windows concealed a wealth of obscene experience like the eyes of ancient street-walkers. The souls of those squat Victorian houses were languidly interested in him. Another victim. . . . That was what he must seem to them. And still the windows of Number Ten were unlighted. He heard the clock in the Art Gallery chime eleven: a leisurely, placid chime muffled by gusty rain. Perhaps the woman had lied to him. Perhaps, at that very moment Rosie was sleeping peacefully in the unlighted upper story. He was overwrought with the strain of the examination on the top of this devastating passion. He had better go home. He turned to go, and at that very moment he saw two figures approaching from the Halesby Road. The street lamp, at the corner, threw their shadows on the shining pavement. One of them was Rosie—he would have known her anywhere—and the other, beyond doubt, was Griffin. He was seized with the same blind passion that had swept over him in the big schoolroom at St. Luke’s ten years before, an impulse to murder that he could only control by digging his finger nails into his hands.