Then the Victoria rolled away, and he was standing, one foot in the street, the other on the kerb, gazing after them through a mist of something so near tears that he was reduced to a painful struggle to gain even the appearance of self-control.
And then, for a quarter-hour, mood followed mood so fast that they almost maddened him.
He thought of old Hump, up there in the office, fighting out their common battle. Perhaps he ought to go back; do his best to understand the accounts. Figures always depressed him. No matter. He would go back. He would show Hump that he could at least be a friend. Yes, he could at least show that. Thing to do was to keep thinking of the other fellow. Forget yourself. That was the thing!
But what he did, first, was to cross over to Swanson's flower shop and sternly order violets. Paid cash for them.
'Miss Cicely Hamlin?' asked the Swanson-girl.
'Yes,' growled Henry, 'for Miss Hamlin. Send them right over, please.'
Then he walked around the block; muttering aloud; starting; glancing-about; muttering again. He could hardly go to Cicely's. Not this evening! Not when she had been willing to leave it like that.
He meant to go, of course. Too early. By seven-thirty or so. But he told himself he wouldn't do it. She would have to write him. Or lose him. He would wait in dignified silence.
The early September twilight was settling down on Sunbury.
Lights came on, here and there. The dusk was a relief.
He had wrecked everything. It wasn't so much that he had proposed an understanding. In the circumstances she couldn't altogether object to that. It was risking the vital, final decision, of course. But that, sooner or later, would have to be risked. That was something a man had to face, and go through, and be a sport about. No, the trouble seemed to be that he had lost himself. He had made it awkward, impossible, for both of them. Through his impatience he had created an impossible situation. And in losing himself he had lost her, and lost her in the worst way imaginable. He had contrived to make an utterly ridiculous figure of himself, and, in a measure, of her. He had to set his teeth hard on that thought, and compress his lips.
He was on Simpson Street again. Yellow gas-light shone out of the windows of the _Gleaner_ offices, over Hemple's. Old Hump was hard at it.