Chapter 12
It was after leaving Miss Daisy Hyslop’s flat that the event to
which Francis Ledsam had been looking forward more than anything
else in the world, happened. It came about entirely by chance.
There were no taxis in the Strand. Francis himself had finished
work for the day, and feeling disinclined for his usual rubber of
bridge, he strolled homewards along the Mall. At the corner of
Green Park, he came face to face with the woman who for the last
few months had scarcely been out of his thoughts. Even in that
first moment he realised to his pain that she would have avoided
him if she could. They met, however, where the path narrowed, and
he left her no chance to avoid him. That curious impulse of
conventionality which opens a conversation always with cut and
dried ban
