380 ANGEL PAVEMENT

Colladium. Girls always kept a chap waiting. They were
famous for it. At eight o'clock he began to be anxious.
He wondered if he was waiting in the wrong place, and
he hastily searched the whole breadth of the entrance.
At quarter-past eight, his eyes began to smart. Time,
which had passed so slowly at first, was now rushing
away. The Ronald Mawlborough picture had started
long ago. A lump, compact of sheer misery, rose in his
throat and then wobbled up and down there, trying to
choke him. Half a dozen times he stepped forward
eagerly, only to retire again, under the stare of strange
girls who thought they were about to be accosted, and to
pretend to himself that it was still worth while staying
there a little longer. The last half-hour was nothing but
a dismal farce, for he knew that she could not be coming
now, yet somehow his feet refused to move more than a
yard or two away. It was nine o'clock when he finally
left the place, with two useless tickets in his pocket. One
of them he could have used, but he never thought for a
moment of doing so. It was Lena he wanted to see, not
Ronald Mawlborough.

He thought of a hundred excuses for her. She might
have been taken ill quite suddenly, for girls often were,
he believed. Something might have happened at the
house. Her father might have come back unexpectedly.
What he could not believe was that there was any mis-
take about the meeting itself, for she had suggested both
the time and the place. Still struggling with his dis-
appointment, he hurried along, through the stupid
idiotic crowds, and caught the first bus that would take
him to Maida Vale. More excited every minute, he
turned at last into Carrington Villas, and almost ran to
get a sight of 4A. There was no light coming from tnc