A Zeppelin warning, a few hours before, had driven the people to
their homes. There was not a chink of light to be seen anywhere.
An intense and gloomy stillness seemed to brood over the deserted
thoroughfares. Nightbirds on their way home flitted by like
shadows. Policemen lurked in the shadows of the houses. The few
vehicles left crawled about with insufficient lights. Even the
warning horns of the taxicab men sounded furtive and repressed.
Lessingham, as he marched stolidly along, felt curiously in
sympathy with his environment. Hayter's news brought him face to
face with that inner problem which had so suddenly become the
dominant factor in his life. For the first time he knew what love
was. He felt the wonder of it, the far-reaching possibilities,
the strange idealism called so unexpectedly into being. He
recognized the vagaries of Philippa's disposition, and yet,
during the last few days, he had convinced himself that she was
beginning to care. Her strained relations with her husband had
been, without a doubt, her first incentive towards the acceptance
of his proffered devotion. Now he told himself with eager
hopefulness that some portion of it, however minute, must be for
his own sake. The relations between husband and wife, he reminded
himself, must, at any rate, have been strained during the last
few months, or Cranston would never have been able to keep his
secret.
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