Several weeks passed. Life was, on the whole, uneventful; his energies were absorbed in mastering the new job, and he had as little energy to spare for private worries as during his first weeks as a window-cleaner. He had taken lodgings near the Export Express offices; both Bunder and Simons had given him addresses that they recommended, but to accept either would have meant the end of his policy of strict neutrality, and he was determined to preserve it until he saw how the land lay; so he found a place for himself. It was drab, but he did hardly more than sleep there, and the bed was comfortable. He had hoped that removal from Stotwell, combined with the change in his way of life, would rid him of the obsession that had seized him that evening in the Oak Lounge; but his hope was streaked with despair, and even, at the deepest layer of all, ousted by a desire to stay in the struggle. Had he not found himself a job that carried good pay? Not riches, but certainly more than he had earned before, and enough to make it something more than an occasional fling when he ate a meal at a good hotel. And had not his motive, only half unconsciously, been just that—to put himself in a better position for taking stock of his chances vis-à-vis the Rodericks?

He tried to shrug the notion away, but one tell-tale symptom prevailed. When his route to the docks lay southward, it took him through Stotwell, which lay about twenty miles away; and, when­ever possible, he called at the Grand Hotel and looked into the Oak Lounge for a moment. It was useless to resolve, as he always did resolve, that he would drive straight through the town; doubly useless to maintain to himself, as he always did maintain, a foolish pose of I-can-have-a-drink-if-I-like indifference. A hundred-fold useless to point out to himself the idiocy of imagining that because he had once seen her in the Oak Lounge, he had only to hang around there for long enough and he would see her again. Probably she did not go into the Oak Lounge once in three years. True, the barman had said something about the Rodericks being frequent customers there, but the barman was probably lying, in a charitable attempt to pay for his drink with some good news. Wearily admitting all this, he nevertheless parked his car, when­ever possible, and padded up the broad staircase to meet the accustomed disappointment. She was never there, and in any case he would have had no idea what to do about it if she had been.