For just the fraction of a moment longer she was frightened and puzzled by Lewis's dumfounded mien; then her mind harked back for the clue and got it. No one had to tell her that the game was up so far as Lewis was concerned. She knew it. Her face suddenly crinkled up with mirth. With a peal of laughter, she dodged him and ran improperly for her very proper little turnout. He did not follow except with his eyes. "Larfin' at _us_, governor," jibed the diminutive cockney, putting a rail between himself and Lewis. "The 'uzzy! The minute I lays my heye on that marm, I says, 'Blime yer, _you_ ain't no lydy'! I say, governor, give us a penny." Lewis turned away and took a few steps gropingly, head down, as though he walked in a trance. Presently he stopped and came back, feeling with finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket. He drew out a gold coin, looked at it gravely, and flipped it across the rail at the ragamuffin. Then he turned and walked off with a rapid stride. The little cockney snatched at the coin, and popped it into his mouth. Too overwhelmed to speak his gratitude, he stood on his head until Lewis was out of sight. It was the first time in his life that he had handled, much less possessed, a "thick un." CHAPTER LI The expert surgeon, operating for blindness on the membranes of the eye, is denied the bulwark of an anesthetic. Such a one will tell you that the moment of success is the moment most pregnant with disaster. To the patient who has known only the fraction of life that lies in darkness, the sudden coming of light is a miracle beyond mere resurrection from the dead. But he is warned he must avoid any spasm of joy. Should he cry out and start at the coming of the dawn, in that moment he bids farewell forever to the light of day. Something of this shock of sudden sight had come to Lewis, but it came to him with no spasm of joy. A man who has been drugged does not awake to joy, but to pain. Liberation and suffering too often walk hand in hand. Lewis had felt no bondage; consequently his freedom was as terrible as it was sudden. It plunged him into depths of depression he had never before sounded. From the park he went mechanically to the flat, and sat for hours by the window looking out upon the dead Sunday gray of London. Darkness came, and with it Nelton and lights. Nelton remarked that there was nothing to eat in the house. "I know," said Lewis, and sat on, too abject to dress and go out for dinner. In his depression his thoughts turned naturally to his father. He thought of joining him, and searched time-tables and sailings, only to find that he could not catch up with the expedition. Besides, as he looked back on their last days in America, he doubted whether his father would have welcomed his coming.