He was looking out of his window one midday rather tired, not very well, and glad that it was not very likely he would have to stir out of doors, when he saw Elsie Bengough crossing the square towards his house. The weather had broken; it was a raw and gusty day; and she had to force her way against the wind that set her ample skirts bellying about her opulent figure and her veil spinning and streaming behind her. Oleron acted swiftly and instinctively. Seizing his hat, he sprang to the door and descended the stairs at a run. A sort of panic had seized him. She must be prevented from setting foot in the place. As he ran along the alley he was conscious that his eyes went up to the eaves as if something drew them. He did not know that a slate might not accidentally fall.... He met her at the gate, and spoke with curious volubleness. "This is really too bad, Elsie! Just as I'm urgently called away! I'm afraid it can't be helped though, and that you'll have to think me an inhospitable beast." He poured it out just as it came into his head. She asked if he was going to town. "Yes, yes--to town," he replied. "I've got to call on--on Chambers. You know Chambers, don't you? No, I remember you don't; a big man you once saw me with.... I ought to have gone yesterday, and--" this he felt to be a brilliant effort--"and he's going out of town this afternoon. To Brighton. I had a letter from him this morning." He took her arm and led her up the square. She had to remind him that his way to town lay in the other direction. "Of course--how stupid of me!" he said, with a little loud laugh. "I'm so used to going the other way with you--of course; it's the other way to the bus. Will you come along with me? I am so awfully sorry it's happened like this...." They took the street to the bus terminus. This time Elsie bore no signs of having gone through interior struggles. If she detected anything unusual in his manner she made no comment, and he, seeing her calm, began to talk less recklessly through silences. By the time they reached the bus terminus, nobody, seeing the pallid-faced man without an overcoat and the large ample-skirted girl at his side, would have supposed that one of them was ready to sink on his knees for thankfulness that he had, as he believed, saved the other from a wildly unthinkable danger. They mounted to the top of the bus, Oleron protesting that he should not miss his overcoat, and that he found the day, if anything, rather oppressively hot. They sat down on a front seat. Now that this meeting was forced upon him, he had something else to say that would make demands upon his tact. It had been on his mind for some time, and was, indeed, peculiarly difficult to put. He revolved it for some minutes, and then, remembering the success of his story of a sudden call to town, cut the knot of his difficulty with another lie. "I'm thinking of going away for a little while, Elsie," he said. She merely said, "Oh?"