He took a desk in the office of a Scotch
engineering firm on Henrietta Street,
and was at work almost constantly.
He avoided the clubs and usually dined alone
at his hotel. One afternoon, after he had tea,
he started for a walk down the Embankment
toward Westminster, intending to end his
stroll at Bedford Square and to ask whether
Miss Burgoyne would let him take her to the
theatre. But he did not go so far. When he
reached the Abbey, he turned back and
crossed Westminster Bridge and sat down to
watch the trails of smoke behind the Houses
of Parliament catch fire with the sunset.
The slender towers were washed by a rain of
golden light and licked by little flickering
flames; Somerset House and the bleached
gray pinnacles about Whitehall were floated
in a luminous haze. The yellow light poured
through the trees and the leaves seemed to
burn with soft fires. There was a smell of
acacias in the air everywhere, and the
laburnums were dripping gold over the walls
of the gardens. It was a sweet, lonely kind
of summer evening. Remembering Hilda as she
used to be, was doubtless more satisfactory
than seeing her as she must be now--and,
after all, Alexander asked himself, what was
it but his own young years that he was
remembering?
He crossed back to Westminster, went up
to the Temple, and sat down to smoke in
the Middle Temple gardens, listening to the
thin voice of the fountain and smelling the
spice of the sycamores that came out heavily
in the damp evening air.
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