Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/325

Rh that our position was too strong, perhaps my happy allusion to the Oval had daunted for the time being his buccaneering spirit. We established Pleever, with a clerk, in two modest rooms at the top of a building in Chancery Lane, all the offices the Quorley Granite Company needed.

Now that this affair was settled, I found myself very much at leisure. I had my journalism, indeed, and the briefs came in; but journalism and the law barely filled my mornings, save when I was in court. I had all the more leisure to brood upon the loss of Angel. As the days passed the sense of that loss by no means lessened, but rather I continued to learn, with more and more bitterness, how greatly she had filled my life, and what a gap her absence had made in it. Life, indeed, had again grown as trivial and unimportant a matter as it had been before she came into it. To think of the foolish carelessness by which I had let go her gracious and inspiring presence, set me raging at myself. Memories of her eyes, of her delightful smile, of her lips which I had never kissed, of the poignant tones in her voice, haunted me always, and consumed me with regret. Sometimes, when I was absorbed in my work, or lay awake of nights, I would hear her footfall in the passage or in the next room, and twice I awoke to hear her laugh dying away. Often a fever of restlessness wasted