Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/525

 some minutes, Mrs. Hilbery realized the situation, and accepted it good-humouredly, apologizing to Ralph for his disappointment.

“Never mind,” she said, “we’ll go to St. Paul’s another day, and it may turn out, though I can’t promise that it will, that he’ll take us past Westminster Abbey, which would be even better.”

Ralph was scarcely aware of what she went on to say. Her mind and body both seemed to have floated into another region of quick-sailing clouds rapidly passing across each other and enveloping everything in a vaporous indistinctness. Meanwhile he remained conscious of his own concentrated desire, his impotence to bring about anything he wished, and his increasing agony of impatience.

Suddenly Mrs. Hilbery pulled the cord with such decision that even Anderson had to listen to the order which she leant out of the window to give him. The carriage pulled up abruptly in the middle of Whitehall before a large building dedicated to one of our Government offices. In a second Mrs. Hilbery was mounting the steps, and Ralph was left in too acute an irritation by this further delay even to speculate what errand took her now to the Board of Education. He was about to jump from the carriage and take a cab, when Mrs. Hilbery reappeared talking genially to a figure who remained hidden behind her.

“There’s plenty of room for us all,” she was saying. “Plenty of room. We could find space for four of you, William,” she added, opening the door, and Ralph found that Rodney had now joined their company. The two men glanced at each other. If distress, shame, discomfort in its most acute form were ever visible upon a human face, Ralph could read them all expressed beyond the eoquence of words upon the face of his unfortunate companion. But Mrs. Hilbery was either completely unseeing or