Lawrence pondered this resentfully. There was too much truth in what Joanna had said for him to scout it on the instant. Had he not all his life gone seeking happiness outside himself? It came to him now almost with the force of a discovery. And yet it was a lie – what a lie it was! – that this woman he loved now so plausibly asked him to share. He himself had lied when he had said her friendship would make him happy. He did not expect happiness from it. He needed what he could get of her. That was all … didn’t even want it … needed it. And he cared not what he had to pay for it in wretchedness.

And just because he needed it, she wasn’t playing fair. No, she wasn’t. But he would have to share her lie. For he feared above all things to lose his chance of seeing her again.

“Then if I come to see you when I’m settled in London,” he managed to say, with a peculiar smile, as he was leaving, “it will be because I’m happy in myself. I think you may count on seeing me.”

All the evening Joanna was alone. Having finished her packing she started putting her rooms in order.

She existed submerged beneath the incessant holiday clamour. The revellers were returning to their homes, and by nine o’clock the trampling and shouting in the street had become a steady torture. The only respite came when a band of boys and girls passed along the pavement singing the music-hall song of the moment. They sang with the irreproachable ecstatic rhythm of the cockney, their voices twanging out defiantly in parts.

Then in the court below, a piano-organ struck up, and people began to dance in front of the Bird-in-Hand. It was a taking tune, full of negro syncopations; and Joanna leaned her forehead against the pane of her back window and looked down at the dancers. A fat girl in crushed white muslin with clumsy feet, wriggled her body monotonously to the music, and there was a fixed, mesmeric smile on her gleaming face. Opposite to her a decrepit man hopped in time, while a baby clutched one of his knees, and granny, careworn and fit to drop, rocked back and forth in toothless laughter at her old man’s antics.