For all the change about him and within him, the hand of time might have been put back four years, and the tender might have been nearing the outward bound ship, instead of the Southampton landing-stage. It was the same raw mizzling rain as when he had crossed the harbour four years before; the same wet, shivering crowd of second-class passengers, with the water streaming from waterproofs, umbrellas and hand luggage on to the sloppy deck. In his heart was the same mingling of anxiety and apathy, the same ineradicable sense of pariahdom. He had thought that the sight of England once more would have brought him a throb of gladness. It only intensified his depressing fears for the future.

The circumstances reproduced themselves with startling actuality. One of the men in charge of the tender had a great ugly seam across his face. Joyce remembered having seen him before, in just the same attitude, with a coil of rope in his hand. Had he not awakened from a minute’s dream that had covered an illusory four years of his life? He looked around, almost expecting to see Noakes, in his ridiculous curly silk hat and old frieze overcoat.

The tender came alongside the landing-stage, and he stepped ashore with the dripping crowd. The flurry of the Custom House and the transport of his meagre baggage to the railway station broke the illusion. He was in England at last, and it seemed a strange country. During the journey to London, he had the companionship of some of his fellow-travellers. At Waterloo they parted. Then he felt terribly lonely.

“Cab, sir?” asked a porter.

He was standing over his luggage, somewhat lost amid the bustle and tumult of the station. It was the late afternoon, and the platforms were hurrying with suburban passengers. The incessant movement through the blue glare of the electric light dazed his unaccustomed eyes. He declined the porter’s offer. Cabs were a luxury he could ill afford. Besides, one meagre Gladstone bag contained his whole possessions, and he could easily carry it. Leaving the station, he took an omnibus for Victoria, with the idea of seeking his old Pimlico lodgings. If he could not be taken in there, it would not be difficult to find a room in the neighbourhood. Still confused by the sudden transition to the midst of the roar of London, he peered through the glass sides at the wet pavements glistening in the gaslight, the shop fronts, the eternal hurrying by of vague forms, and the dash past of vehicles. From Westminster Bridge the face of Big Ben greeted him. He stared at it stupidly as long as he could see it. The light on the Clock Tower announced that the House was sitting. It was all curiously familiar, and yet he felt like an alien. There was not a soul in London to welcome his home-coming. His heart sank with the sense of loneliness. He was as infinitesimal and as isolated a unit in this seething, swarming ant-hill of humanity as amid the starry solitudes of the African veldt.

As chance willed it, he found the house in Pimlico in the same hands as before, and his old room in the attics vacant. Nothing had altered, except that it looked smaller and four years shabbier. The same discoloured blind hung before the window, the same fly-blown texts adorned the walls. The same acrid smell of dust and ashes and earth and the unaired end of all human things met his nostrils. When he went to sleep that night, it seemed incredible that four years should have passed since he had last lain there.

In a day or two the strangeness wore off. London is in a Londoner’s blood. No matter how long his exile, life there comes to him as naturally as swimming does to a swimmer after years of non-practice. He remembered how he had yearned for its sights and sounds and stimulating movement. Now they were his again, and he took a measure of content. His first care was to provide himself with some clothes; his next, to visit the publishers. A cordial reception gratified him. The book was bound to have some success. The manuscript was in the printer’s hands. Publication was announced for the spring. Joyce went home lighter-hearted after the interview. It was delightful to be treated as an intellectual man once more. His prospects too were not so very gloomy. With the little capital he had brought back from South Africa and the £80 for his book, he saw himself saved from starvation for two years, if he lived very, very humbly on a little over a pound a week. Meanwhile he could earn something by occasional odds and ends of writing, and also complete his second novel. He arranged his scheme of life as he walked along. He would leave his lodging punctually at a certain hour after breakfast, walk to the British Museum, write all day in the Reading Room, dine, walk home, and write or read in the evenings until it was time for bed.

Thus, as ever, his sensitive nature reflected the little ray of hope. But, as usual, it was soon eclipsed by the darkening shadow in his soul, although he set to work with dogged determination. The prospect of life-long solitude appalled him. It was the terrible part of his never-ending punishment. To a nature like his, companionship and sympathy are essentials of development. Without them it withers like a parched plant And yet he dreaded making new acquaintances, on account of the shame that would inevitably follow if his identity and history leaked out He accepted loneliness as his portion. There were only two people in England whom, knowing his story, he could trust to shake him by the hand—Yvonne and the actor McKay. The latter was necessarily lost in the obscurities of his roving profession. Yvonne was married to his cousin, moving in the sphere to which beyond all others he was rigorously denied access. One day, however, when the memory of her sweet kind face came back to him, and he yearned for its bright sympathy, he wrote to her at Fulminster.

He felt somewhat cheered after he had despatched the letter. And as comfortings often come in pairs, he was further cheered by seeing in an evening paper which he bought from a stand near the pillar-box, a general article he had sent up two or three days before. It was an encouraging beginning. At any rate, London streets were more stimulating to his intellectual powers than the dull, deadening life of the African farm. He made many good resolutions during these first days in London. He would win back his lost scholarship, begin to form a humble library. On his way home he bought out of a fourpenny box an old copy of Plato’s “Republic.” He sat up half the night reading it.

To his surprise and disappointment, instead of a letter coming from Yvonne, his own was returned through the Dead Letter Office. “Left Fulminster two years ago—present address unknown.” He was puzzled. At the Museum he consulted the Clergy List for the year. According to it, Canon Chisely was still Rector of Fulminster. What had happened to Yvonne?

“It must be some silly mistake,” he said to himself. He wrote again; but with the same result. He thought of writing to Everard, but reflected that he too must be ignorant of Yvonne’s address; also that in any case, perhaps, he would disregard his letter. There was some mystery. Both his affection for Yvonne and the novelty of a curiosity outside himself spurred his interest. A day or two afterwards, he noticed on a hoarding an advertisement of cheap excursion trains to the great provincial town next to Fulminster. The journey would be very inexpensive. Why should he not go down and pick up what information he could? The idea of the little excitement pleased him.

He started the next morning at a very early hour, and arrived at Fulminster about noon. The place was well known to him. He had often visited his cousin in days gone by.

Many bitter-sweet associations crowded upon him as he walked up from the station through the streets.

He went on, without any definite idea as to his course of action. Almost mechanically he bent his steps toward the old abbey, whose spire rose above the housetops, at the end of the High Street. Soon the great mass towered above him. He stood for a while looking upwards at the wealth of tracery, and crocket, and pinnacle, feeling its beauty, and then wandered idly round. At last his eye fell upon a notice on the board by the vestry door. It was signed “J. Abdy, Rector”; other notices bore the same signature. This was a new surprise. Wondering what had occurred, he left the Abbey Close and proceeded round the familiar path to the front door of the Rectory. He would take the bull by the horns.

“Is the Rector in?” he asked the servant who opened to him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Could I see him for a moment?”

“What name, sir?”

“Chisely,” said Joyce, instinctively, then he coloured. It was odd that he should have been taken off his guard.

The servant showed him into the library. A glance proved that Everard no longer inhabited it. No trace of the dilettante was visible in its homely comfort. Presently the door opened, and the Rector, a kindly grey-bearded man, entered the room. Joyce made his apology for intrusion.

“I came down expecting to find Canon Chisely. I am a distant relation of his, not long come from abroad.”

“I fear you have come on a vain errand,” said the Rector with a smile. “He took over his diocese in New Zealand some months ago.”

“His diocese?” repeated Joyce.

“Dear me, have n’t you heard? Canon Chisely accepted the bishopric of Taroofa at the beginning of the year.”

“How very extraordinary!” said Joyce, nonplussed. But the other took his remark literally.

“Yes, it is singular. Most people think he has thrown himself away. A very able man, you know—quite young. He might have had an English bishopric if he had waited.”

“And Mrs. Chisely?” asked Joyce, interrogatively.

The Rector raised a deprecative hand.

“That’s where the whole trouble came in, apparently. It weighed on his mind—a very proud man. He took the first chance that offered.”

“Pardon my questioning you,” said Joyce, “but I am quite in the dark as to what you are referring to. The last letter, two years back, that I received from Mrs. Chisely was dated from here. She was happily married and all that. I am an old friend of hers. What has happened?”

“I can only repeat the gossip, Mr. Chisely. It seems that just about then some misfortune arose—a first husband of Mrs. Chisely’s, supposed dead, turned up, and so there was a separation.”

“And where is Mrs. Chisely now?”

“That’s more than I can say. A lady—a great friend of mine—also I believe a connexion of your own—”

“Mrs. Winstanley?”

“The same. I see you know her. She may be able to inform you. I believe she has said authoritatively that the late Mrs. Chisely went back to her former husband.”

“That I can’t believe,” said Joyce, indignantly.

“I can only give you what I hear,” said the Rector, placidly. “I know Bishop Chisely went to Paris, where they were supposed to be, before starting for New Zealand. But Mrs. Winstanley will tell you.”

“I think I know enough,” said Joyce, hurriedly, and rising from his chair. “I am greatly indebted to you for your kindness, Mr. Abdy.”

“Can I offer you some lunch? It will be on the table in a moment.”

Joyce declined, pleaded a train. He would have liked to sit with this kind gossipy old man, but he could not accept such hospitality under false pretences. Perhaps it was well that he acted thus, for later in the afternoon the Rector described his visitor to Mrs. Winstanley. She listened for some time, and at last broke out:—

“Why, my dear Mr. Abdy, it could have been no one else than the convict cousin! He must have come to get money out of Everard.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Abdy, arresting his hand in a downward stroke of his beard. “Who would have thought it? He seemed such a gentlemanly fellow. And I asked him to lunch!”

“I ’ll write and put the dear Bishop on his guard,” said Mr. Winstanley, virtuously.

Meanwhile, Joyce went away full of wonder and pity. It was an amazing story. Poor Yvonne! He could not believe that she had returned to the scamp of a first husband. The thought was repulsive. At any rate communication between Everard and Yvonne seemed to have been cut off. He was not very sorry for Everard.

“A little trouble will do him good,” he muttered to himself. And he found a certain grim amusement in the contemplation of the chastened Bishop, his cousin. But he felt a great concern for poor fragile little Yvonne cast adrift again upon the world. “I will find out what has become of her, at any rate,” he said, digging his stick into the road.

The natural course was to write to Miss Geraldine Vicary, whose address he fortunately remembered. If she had lost count of Yvonne, he would set to work to find her some other way. He felt as eager now to recover Yvonne’s friendship as he had been apathetic before. To lose no time, while waiting for the early return excursion train, he went into a post-office and wrote and despatched his letter.

The following morning he resumed his newly schemed out life of literary work. Three days passed and no reply came from Miss Vicary. On the fourth morning he received a black-edged envelope bearing the Swansea postmark. He opened it and read:—

Joyce hurried through his dressing, bolted his breakfast, and rushed out into the street, with one idea in his head. Yvonne alone and uncared for, dying in a London hospital—it was incredible. The apparent heartlessness of the woman who wrote, her calm disclaimer of all interest in her dead sister’s dying friend, made his blood boil. A London hospital—an open common ward, with medical students chattering round—it was a cruel place for the sweet delicate woman he remembered as Yvonne. Where were all her friends?

In the dismay, excitement, and indignation of the moment, he forgot his poverty, and jumped into the first hansom-cab he saw.

“St. Mary’s Hospital, quick!”

And the cabman, thinking it a matter of life and death, went at a breakneck pace.