“Not journalism surely?” she hazarded.

Lawrence replied – looking at her, and perceiving a certain repugnance in her face – that journalism it was, for the time at least. He had got a newspaper job of sorts – jumped at it indeed – because that would bring him to London, and because he could go on reading for the Bar at the same time. What it was all to come to, he himself did not yet know. He only knew that he wanted to be “in the stream of things.”

“And professors aren’t?” asked Joanna.

“Not in the way I mean,” he replied. “They are all fenced in and sheltered. A few of them keep up the pretence that this isn’t so. But it is. It has got to be.”

So they talked on for a while, sticking cautiously to generalities, till Lawrence sprang up, as if he had quite suddenly recollected an engagement elsewhere. As he said good bye he asked Joanna if she would go with him next day for a glimpse of Hampstead Heath. He had always wanted to see it on a Bank Holiday.

After a moment’s hesitation she agreed. She always hated the blank day before a journey and Louis was out of town. “We might have another ride together, this time on wooden steeds,” suggested Lawrence.

ΙII

But the walk on Monday was no pleasure to Joanna. Though she had been well disposed toward Lawrence at parting and in her after-thoughts of him, the next meeting found her weary and hostile. She would like to have shut her ears to whatever he said, and the blaring, glaring, untidy Heath had none of the charm she had found there at the Whitsuntide holiday when Louis had been her companion. The vile, raucous voices were an affront, and the ugly laughter. She loathed the reeking faces and the horse-play. She refused after all to ride on the merry-go-round, refused to have tea anywhere but at home. It was all hateful to her.

Some relief came with the escape back to her rooms, though Chapel Court itself was noisy enough. She had thought to shake Lawrence off at the street door and go up alone. Surely he must feel as she did, what a failure the afternoon had been? Then why had he not the sense to leave her? But no! He stuck like a burr, and seemed oblivious to the languor of her invitation.

Still things were better in the quiet interior, and there would be some comfort in tea sipped behind the closed shutters. Here over the archway one was safe. And the cool, untouched breeze crept in at the sides of the curtains.