3()2 ANGEL PAVEMENT

and that sooner or later a girl, a beautiful and passionate
girl, caring nothing for the outside show, would recog-
nise this difference, this wonder, within, would cry; "Oh,
it's you," and love would immediately follow. Then life
would really begin. So far it had not begun; in the
tangle, blather, jumble of mere existence, of eating,
sleeping, working, journeying, and staring, it Bad only
made a number of false starts. In other words, Turgis
had had his little adventures but was not yet in love, or
rather-for he was perpetually in love-had not yet
found the single outlet for all this flood, the one girl

After returning to his own desk, Turgis thought about
these other girls who might so easily have come to work
by his side instead of continuing with the Kwik-Work
Razor Blade or Dunbury b Co., and then, dismissing
them reluctantly, he began to tidy up his desk and finish
off the week's work. It was after twelve, and the week-
end was in sight. He leaned forward on his high stool,
and breathed hard over communications from the
London and North Eastei^i Railway and the City Trans-
port Company. There was a girl at the City Transport
—he had never seen her, but she often answered the
telephone—who sounded nice, lovely voice she had, and
once or twice he had made her laugh. If he had been
in the office by himself, he would have talked to her
properly, perhaps suggested an appointment-on the
pictures they called it a "date," but Turgis thought of it
as a "point"-but he was never alone, and even if there
was only that silly kid, Stanley, there, it would spoil it.
But it was fine to hear her laugh down the telephone.
Silvery, that was it-silvery laughter-her silvery laughter
—just like in a book.

He was interrupted by a touch on his arm, and he