She was in the open roadway, passing into the deeps of the central freedom of Piccadilly Circus, the crowded corner unknowingly left behind. Just ahead was the island, the dark outline of the fountain, the small surmounting figure almost invisible against the shadowy upper mass of a bright-porched building over the way. The grey trottoir, empty of the shawled flowerwomen and their great baskets, was a quiet haven. The surrounding high brilliancies beneath which people moved along the pavements from space to space of alternating harsh gold and shadowy grey, met softly upon its emptiness, drawing a circle of light round the shadow cast by the wide basin of the fountain. There was a solitary man's figure standing near the curb, midway on her route across the island to take to the roadway opposite Shaftesbury Avenue; standing arrested; there was no traffic to prevent his crossing; a watchful habitué; she would pass him in a moment, the last fragment of the west-end ... good-bye, and her thoughts towards gaining the wide homeward-going lane. A little stoutish dapper grey-suited ... _Tommy Babington!_ Standing at ease, turned quite away from the direction that would take him home; still and expressionless, unrecognisable save for the tilt of his profile and the set of his pince-nez. She had never before seen him in unconscious repose, never with this look of a motionless unvoyaged soul encased in flesh; yet had always known even when she had been most attracted, that thus he was. He had glanced. Had he recognised her? It was too late to wheel round and save his solitude. Going on, she must sweep right across his path. Fellow-feeling was struggling against her longing to touch, through the medium of his voice, the old home-life so suddenly embodied. He had seen her, and his unawakened face told her that she would neither pause nor speak. Years ago they would have greeted each other vociferously.... She was now so shrouded that he was not sure she had recognised him. Through his stupefaction smouldered a suspicion that she wished to avoid recognition. He was obviously encumbered with the sense of having placed her amidst the images of his preoccupation. She rushed on, passing him with a swift salute, saw him raise his hat with mechanical promptitude as she stepped from the curb and forward, pausing an instant for a passing hansom, in the direction of home. It was done. It had always been done from the very beginning. They had met equally at last. This was the reality of their early association. Her spirits rose, clamorous. It was epical she felt. One of those things arranged above one's head and perfectly staged. Tommy of all people wakened thus out of his absorption in the separated man's life that so decorated him with mystery in the feminine suburbs; shocked into helpless inactivity; glum with an irrevocable recognising hostility. It had been arranged. Silent acceptance had been forced upon him, by a woman of his own class. She