Pavements and roadway slippery with greasy, black mud; atmosphere yellow with evil-tasting vapor; a November afternoon in London; evening drawing on, fog closing down.

George Maddison, tall, erect, dark, walked slowly along, his eyes, ever ready to seize upon any striking effect of color, noting the curious mingling of lights: the dull yellow overhead, the chilly beams of the street lamps, the glow and warmth from the shop windows. Few of the faces he saw were cheerful, almost all wearing that expression of discontent which such dreary circumstances bring to even the most hardened and experienced Cockneys. For his own part he was well pleased, having heard that morning of his election as an Associate of the Royal Academy, a fact that gratified him not as adding anything to his repute, but as being a compliment to the school of young painters of which he was the acknowledged leader and ornament: impressionists whose impressions showed the world to be beautiful; idealists who had the imagination to see that the ideal is but the better part of the real.

Maddison paused before a highly lighted picture-dealer’s window, glancing with amusement at the conventional prettiness there displayed; then, turning his back upon it, he looked across the street, debating whether he should cross over and have some tea at the famous pastry cook’s. A tall, slight figure of a woman, neatly dressed in black, caught his attention. Obviously, she too was hesitating over the same question. In spite of the simplicity and quiet fashion of her black gown, her air was elegant; her head nicely poised; her shoulders well held; the lines of her figure graceful, lithe and seductive. Though he could not see her face he felt certain that she was interesting and attractive, if not beautiful; also, there was a something wistful and forlorn about her that appealed to him. Warily stepping through the slippery mud, he crossed over and stood behind her for a moment, marking the graceful tendrils of red-gold hair that clustered round the nape of her neck and the delicate shape and coloring of her ears. As she turned to move away, she came full face to him, instant recognition springing into her eyes.

“George—!” she exclaimed.

“Miss Lewis!”

There was immediate and evident constraint on each side, as though the sudden meeting were half-welcome, half-embarrassing.

“Were you going in to tea here?” he asked. “I was. Let me come with you? It’s an age since we met. It’s horrid and damp out here.”

“It is,” she replied, slightly shivering. “Yes, I should like a cup of tea.”

They went through the heavy swing doors, opened for them by a diminutive boy in buttons, into the long, highly decorated, dimly lighted, discreet tea room, which lacked its usual crowd. A few couples, in one case two young men, occupied the cozy corners, to one of the more remote of which Maddison led the way, and settled himself and his companion in the comfortable armchairs. He ordered tea and cakes of the pretty, black-eyed waitress, dainty and demure in the uniform of deep, dull red.

“You sigh as if you were tired, Miss Lewis, and glad to rest?” he said, trying in the dim light to study her expression.

“I am tired and I am glad to rest. It’s very cozy in here. I’ve never been here before.”

She laid her hand upon the arm of the chair next to him and he noticed that she wore a wedding ring.

“I called you Miss Lewis. I see——?”

“Yes—I’m married. I don’t suppose you remember much about Larchstone—I recognized you before you did me; I saw you across the road. But just possibly you do remember our curate, Mr. Squire—you used to laugh at him. I’m Mrs. Squire. He’s still a curate, but not any longer in the country. We live at Kennington; what a world of difference one letter makes! Kennington—Kensington. Have you ever been in Kennington?”

Maddison remembered Edward Squire distinctly: a tall, gaunt enthusiast, clumsy in mind and in body. He leaned back in his chair as a whirl of recollections rushed across his mind: the red-roofed, old-fashioned village of Larchstone; the old-world rector and his daughter, a pretty slip of a country girl, who had grown into—Mrs. Squire. He remembered the summer weeks he had spent there, painting in the famous woodlands, and the half-jesting, half-serious love he had made to the rector’s daughter. Since then until this afternoon he had not met her, though the memory of her face, with the searching eyes, had come to him now and again.

She watched him as he dreamed. He had changed very little; how distinctly she had always remembered him; the swarthy, narrow face framed in heavy black hair, the deep-set black eyes, the thin nose, the trim pointed beard and mustache hiding the sensual mouth, the tall, well-knit figure. Far more vividly than he did she recall those summer months; in her life they had been an outstanding event, an episode merely in his.

“Do you still take three lumps of sugar?” she asked, as she poured out the tea.

“You remember that? Yes, still three, thanks.”

“You see, I hadn’t very much to remember in those days.”

“It’s five years ago—” he hesitated.

“Five this last summer, and a good many things have happened since then. My father’s dead—three years ago—and I’m a good young curate’s wife. And you? But I needn’t ask; the newspapers have told me all about you. Are you still full of enthusiasms?”

“I suppose so. I think so, only they’re crystallizing into practices. As we grow older the brain grows stiff, and we’re not so ready to go climbing mountains to achieve impossible heights.”

“You’ve climbed pretty high. A step higher to-day—A.R.A. Fame, success and money, that’s a fairly high mountain to have climbed—at least it looks so to me.”

The forlorn tone of her voice confirmed the impression his first sight of her had made upon him. He looked at her keenly as she sat there with her eyes fixed upon her tea which she was stirring slowly. She had become a very lovely woman and a poor curate’s wife.

“Lonely?” he asked almost unintentionally.

“Did I say lonely?” she asked looking quickly at him. “We were talking in metaphors. I suppose that way of talking was invented by some one who didn’t want to blurt out ugly truths.”

“Or who fancied that commonplace ideas become uncommon when divorced from commonplace words.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here, chatting like old friends—after all this time? You didn’t answer my question: have you ever been in Kennington?”

“I go down to the Oval now and then to watch the cricket; that’s all I know about Kennington.”

“And that’s nothing. You might as well judge West Kensington by an Earl’s Court exhibition, or a woman’s nature by her face. I think it would do you good to see more of Kennington. I can believe that to anyone who has lived there any other place on earth would seem heaven.”

“Heaven?”

“Even the other place would be an improvement.”

“You’re rather hard on Kennington, aren’t you?”

“It’s very hard on me! It stifles me. I come up to town—you see, I speak of coming up to town—every now and then, just to escape from the horrible atmosphere. There; just to breathe freely for a bit, to look at the shops, to see faces with some thoughts in them, to escape from—Kennington.”

“And do you escape?”

“Not altogether. The atmosphere there is saturating.”

“Does your husband like it?”

“He doesn’t know anything about it. Souls to save and bodies to feed, that’s his simple want in life. There are plenty of both in our neighborhood. I suppose you wouldn’t come down to see us?”

“If I may——?”

“You may,” she answered, laughing softly, almost to herself, and he noticed how her smile lit up her whole face for the moment. “You’ll seem so queer down there.”

“Why?”

“Just think—but no, you couldn’t realize what I’m laughing at; you’ve never been in Kennington, and—even more likely—have never seen yourself as I see you.”

Resisting the temptation to ask her in what light she saw him, he in turn laughed as he looked down into the provocative face turned toward him.

“You’re getting better,” he said.

“Yes, thanks; the tea has done me good, and the meeting with you.”

She spoke quite frankly.

“I’m glad,” he answered, “and glad I was lucky enough to meet you.”

“What a pretty, empty phrase,” she said, with a little sigh and a droop of the corners of her mouth. “Sayings like that are the threepenny bits of conversation; they’re not worth sixpence, but they’re better than coppers. Now, I must be off.”

“It’s quite early.”

“Yes, for you. But for me—Kennington and high tea; but you know neither of them.”

“You’ve asked me to come——”

“Not to high tea. Come some afternoon or evening. Drop me a post card so that we shall be sure to be in. My husband will be so glad to see you again.”

“And you?”

“I have seen you again.”

“Very well, I’ll drop you a line of warning. And how are you going home?”

“By a clever and cheap combination of penny bus and halfpenny tram. Now, good-by, and thank you.”

They lingered a moment in the shop entrance, warmth and coziness behind, the darkness and the thickening fog before.

“I don’t like you’re going alone. The fog’s getting very thick.”

“Please don’t worry about me; if the tram can’t get along I shall walk. Good-by, and, again, thank you.”

Nodding in a friendly manner, she walked quickly away, leaving him irresolute. But he soon determined to follow her.

“You really must let me see you home,” he said, as he caught up with her; “it’s going to be bad.”

“So am I, and insist on having my own way. Don’t spoil it for me. I don’t often have my own way with anything or anybody.”

Again she walked quickly away into the darkness.