Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 7.pdf/482

 She waited at the Book in the hall while he signed his name. At the iron gates of the Schools she said: "I am going through Kensington Gardens."

He was now feeling irritated about the addresses, and he would not see the implicit invitation. "I am going towards Chelsea."

She hesitated a moment, looking at him—puzzled. "Good-bye then," she said.

"Good-bye," he answered, lifting his hat.

He crossed the Exhibition Road slowly with his packed glazed bag, now seamed with cracks, in his hand. He went thoughtfully down to the corner of the Cromwell Road and turned along that to the right so that he could see the red pile of the Science Schools rising fair and tall across the gardens of the Natural History Museum. He looked back towards it regretfully.

He was quite sure that he had failed in this last examination. He knew that any career as a scientific man was now closed to him for ever. And he remembered now how he had come along this very road to that great building for the first time in his life, and all the hopes and resolves that had swelled within him as he had drawn near. That dream of incessant unswerving work! Where might he have reached if only he had had singleness of purpose to make it a reality?

And in these gardens it was that he and Smithers and Parkson had sat on a seat hard by the fossil tree and discoursed of Socialism together before the great paper was read