A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay,
the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of
this London fog--the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of
a lawn he had overheard from a woman's lips that he was not her sole
possessor. And for a moment George walked no longer in black
Piccadilly, but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the
sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the
moon.
A longing seized him to throw his arm round the Buccaneer, and say,
"Come, old boy. Time cures all. Let's go and drink it off!"
But a voice yelled at him, and he started back. A cab rolled out of
blackness, and into blackness disappeared. And suddenly George perceived
that he had lost Bosinney. He ran forward and back, felt his heart
clutched by a sickening fear, the dark fear which lives in the wings
of the fog. Perspiration started out on his brow. He stood quite still,
listening with all his might.
"And then," as he confided to Dartie the same evening in the course of a
game of billiards at the Red Pottle, "I lost him."
Dartie twirled complacently at his dark moustache. He had just put
together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.
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