When it was over, and she had squeezed down the corkscrew staircase in a press of womenfolk, she saw that Lawrence had already almost made his way to her through the crowd and the congratulations. It was then that she was surprised by quite a new view of him. The sculptural folds of the gown gave a dignity that his slight figure needed; and beneath the formality of the white horsehair wig, all his features were sharpened into a more insistent yet sensitive maleness.

This she had seen, or rather felt. But she had felt also that Lawrence had never been so far removed from her as at that moment. He was gone utterly into the unknowable world of men. Nothing of her world could touch him. She was alien, even hostile to the strongly suppressed excitement in his face and movements.

For a minute they had stood talking together. The Call dinner, Lawrence said, would last till about nine o’clock, after which the other members of his mess would want to go to a music hall. He himself didn’t much like the idea – for one thing he had been half-crazy with neuralgia all afternoon. Still it would be better than to return straight from the dinner to his rooms in Chancery Lane. And when Joanna in commiseration (she too had suffered of late from neuralgia) suggested phenacetin with tea by her fireside later in the evening, he thanked her gladly.

So she had stacked up the fire (for though her room with its windows vis-a-vis, was ideal in summer, it was searched by shrewd draughts during the winter); and she had lighted the candles on the mantel-piece, and drawn the curtains close, and set out the tea-things on table and hob. She had changed her day dress too for a thinner one of black silk of the kind that floats and does not rustle. All these festive and hospitable things she had done. At the same time her mood was despondent, and she dully regretted having asked Lawrence at all.

When ten o’clock came, however (it had been six when she left the Temple), and there was still not a sign of her visitor, her depression showed no lifting tendency. It was indeed considerably increased. A further restless quarter of an hour passed and she could settle to nothing. She had just made up her mind to go to bed, and was in the act of blowing out the first candle, when she heard the belated steps of Lawrence passing under the archway.

Was it the frost, she wondered when he came in, that had given him such a cheerful, unusual starriness? As they shook hands she realized that he was for once quite divested of his shyness, and so seemed other than himself.