Certainly it never occurred to him to
hasten his departure by a day on her account, and there
came a morning when he drove through Bloomsbury and
realized that he had not thought about her for a fortnight.
The British Museum suggested her to him there--the British
Museum, and the certainty that within its massive walls
a number of unimaginative young women in collarless
sage-green gowns were copying casts of antique sculptures
at that moment. But he did not allow himself to suppose
that she could possibly be among them.
He sniffed London all day with a home-returning satisfaction
in her solidity and her ugliness and her low-toned fogs
and her great throbbing unostentatious importance, which
the more flippant capital seemed to have intensified in
him. He ordered the most British luncheon he could think
of, and reflected upon the superiority of the beer. He
read the leaders in the _Standard_ through to the bitter
end, and congratulated himself and the newspaper that
there was no rag of an absurd _feuilleton_ to distract
his attention from the importance of the news of the day.
He remembered all sorts of acquaintances that Paris had
foamed over for months; his heart warmed to a certain
whimsical old couple who lived in Park Street and went
out to walk every morning after breakfast with their
poodle.
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