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I wonder why I am liked! How intangible, and yet how real! What a wonderful character I would make in a novel!" At that moment he saw Mrs. Byril in the crowd; but notwithstanding his kind thoughts of her, he prayed she might pass without seeing him.
After long hesitations he had decided on this step, and it seemed to him clear that no one would suit him so well as Mrs. Byril. By marrying an old mistress, he would save himself from all the boredom of a honeymoon. And sitting in the drawing-room, in the various pauses between numerous licentious stories, they discussed their matrimonial project.
He pitied the street-sweepers, and wondered if it were possible for him to slip down into the gutter. "When I have paid my hotel bill, I shan't have a tenner." He thought of Mrs. Byril, but the idea did not please him, and he remembered Frank had told him he had a cottage on the river. He would go there. He might put up for a night or two at Hall's. "I will start a series of articles to-morrow.
I'll see that things are kept within bounds." The conversation fell, and he regretted he must forego this very excellent opportunity to make love to her. Next day, changed in his humour, but still thinking of Lily, he went to see Mrs. Byril, and he stopped a few days with her. He was always strict in his own room, and if Emily sought him in the morning he reprimanded her.
Why more stupid to go than to remain?" Soon after, he received another letter from Mrs. Byril. He glanced through it eagerly for some mention of the girl. Now his being was concentrated in the eyes as a landscape is sometimes in a piece of sky. He read: "She told me that she had been once to see her lover in the Temple." It was then Lily. He turned to Mrs.
Mike scanned every thin face for Lily, and as he stood wedged against a flower-stand, a girl passed him. She turned. It was Lily. "Lily, is it possible? I was looking for you everywhere." "Looking for me! When did you arrive in Nice? How did you know I was here?" "Mrs. Byril wrote. She described a girl, and I knew from her description it must be you. And I came on at once."
Byril had written, and learnt that she had left yesterday, and that Mrs. and Miss Young were not staying there. They had no such name on the books. Looking on the sea and mountains he wondered himself what it all meant. Having bathed and changed his clothes, he sallied forth in a cab to call at every hotel in the town, and after three hours' fruitless search, returned in despair.
"You came on at once to find me?" "Yes; I love you more than ever. I can think only of you.... But when I arrived I found Mrs. Byril had left, and I had no means of finding your address." "You foolish boy; you mean to say you rushed away on the chance that I was the girl described in Mrs. Byril's letter! ... A thousand miles! and never even waited to ask the name or the address!
Byril lent him twenty pounds, wherefore he thought it necessary to lecture Hall for one whole evening on the immorality of ever accepting money from women; and he remained for weeks in idleness, smoking and drinking in restaurants and bar rooms, deaf to Frank's many pleadings for "copy."
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