Four hours until he became public property! “Solicitor’s divorce suit!” A surly, dogged anger replaced that dead feeling within him. “Damn them all!” he thought; “I won’t run away. I’ll act as if nothing had happened.” And in the sweltering heat of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill he walked all the way to his City Club, lunched, and went back to his office. He worked there stolidly throughout the afternoon.

On his way out he saw that his clerks knew, and answered their involuntary glances with a look so sardonic that they were immediately withdrawn. In front of St. Paul’s, he stopped to buy the most gentlemanly of the evening papers. Yes! there he was! “Well-known solicitor’s divorce. Cousin corespondent. Damages given to the blind”⁠—so, they had got that in! At every other face, he thought: “I wonder if you know!” And suddenly he felt queer, as if something were racing round in his head.

What was this? He was letting it get hold of him! He mustn’t! He would be ill. He mustn’t think! He would get down to the river and row about, and fish. “I’m not going to be laid up,” he thought.