"It's a great pity that Mrs. Archdale's friends can't leave her alone! As to being unlike herself, you and I would probably be very unlike
ourselves if we had gone through what this poor lady had just gone
through!" "You see, I was with her on the boat. We were not travelling together,"
Coxeter corrected himself hastily, "I happened to meet her merely on the
journey. My name is Coxeter." The other man's manner entirely altered. He slackened in his quick walk. "I beg your pardon," he said; "of course I had no notion who you were. She says you saved her life! That but for you she would have been in
that boat--the boat that was lost." Coxeter tried to say something in denial of this surprising statement,
but the doctor hurried on, "I may tell you that I'm very worried about
Mrs. Archdale--in fact seriously concerned at her condition. If you have
any influence with her, I beg you to persuade her to refuse herself to
the endless busybodies who want to hear her account of what happened. She won't have a trained nurse, but there ought to be someone on
guard--a human watchdog warranted to snarl and bite!" "Do you think she ought to go away from London?" asked Coxeter in a low
voice. "No, I don't think that--at least not for the present," the medical man
frowned thoughtfully. "What she wants is to be taken out of herself. If
I could prescribe what I believe would be the best thing for her, I
should advise that she go away to some other part of London with someone
who will never speak to her of what happened, and yet who will always
listen to her when she wants to talk about it--some sensible,
commonplace person who could distract her mind without tiring her, and
who would make her do things she has never done before. If she was an
ordinary smart lady, I should prescribe philanthropy"--he made a slight
grimace--"make her go and see some of my poorer patients--come into
contact with a little _real_ trouble. But that would be no change to
Mrs. Archdale. No; what she wants is someone who will force her to be
selfish--who will take her up the Monument one day, and to a music-hall
the next, motor her out to Richmond Park, make her take a good long
walk, and then sit by the sofa and hold her hand if she feels like
crying----" He stopped, a little ashamed of his energy. "Thank you," said Coxeter very seriously, "I'm much obliged to you for
telling me this. I can see the sense of what you say." "You know, in spite of her quiet manner, Mrs. Archdale's a nervous,
sensitive woman"--the doctor was looking narrowly at Coxeter as he
spoke. "She was perfectly calm and--and very brave at the time----"

"That means nothing! Pluck's not a matter of nerve--it ought to be, but
it isn't! But I admit you're a remarkable example of the presence of the
one coupled with the absence of the other. You don't seem a penny the
worse, and yet it must have been a very terrible experience." "You see, it came at the end of my holiday," said Coxeter gravely, "and,
as a matter of fact"--he hesitated--"I feel quite well, in fact,
remarkably well. Do you see any objection to my calling again, I mean
to-day, on Mrs. Archdale? I might put what you have just said before
her." "Yes, do! Do that by all means! Seeing how well you have come through
it"--the doctor could not help smiling a slightly satirical
smile--"ought to be a lesson to Mrs. Archdale. It ought to show her that
after all she is perhaps making a great deal of fuss about nothing." "Hardly that," said Coxeter with a frown. They had now come to the corner of Queen Anne Street. He put out his
hand hesitatingly. The doctor took it, and, oddly enough, held it for a
moment while he spoke. "Think over what I've said, Mr. Coxeter. It's a matter of hours. Mrs.
Archdale ought to be taken in hand at once." Then he went off, crossing
the street. "Pity the man's such a dry stick," he said to himself;
"now's his chance, if he only knew it!" John Coxeter walked straight on. He had written the day before to say
that he would be at his office as usual this morning, but now the fact
quite slipped his mind. Wild thoughts were surging through his brain; they were running away
with him and to such unexpected places! The Monument? He had never thought of going up the Monument; he would
formerly have thought it a sad waste of time, but now the Monument
became to John Coxeter a place of pilgrimage, a spot of secret healing. A man had once told him that the best way to see the City was at night,
but that if you were taking a lady you should choose a Sunday morning,
and go there on the top of a 'bus. He had thought the man who said this
very eccentric, but now he remembered the advice and thought it well
worth following. By the time Coxeter turned into Cavendish Square he had travelled far
further than the Monument. He was in Richmond Park; Nan's hand was
thrust through his arm, as it had been while they had watched the first
boat fill slowly with the women and children. *       *       *       *       *

To lovers who remember, the streets of a great town, far more than
country roads and lanes, hold over the long years precious, poignant
memories, for a background of stones and mortar has about it a character
of permanence which holds captive and echoes the scenes and words
enacted and uttered there. Coxeter has not often occasion to go the little round he went that
morning, but when some accidental circumstance causes him to do so, he
finds himself again in the heart of that kingdom of romance from which
he was so long an alien, and of which he has now become a naturalized
subject. As most of us know, many ways lead to the kingdom of romance;
Coxeter found his way there by a water-way. And so it is that when he reaches the turning into Queen Anne Street
there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
City--the City as it is at night, uncannily deserted save for the
ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October. Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
absorbed in his great adventure,--a far greater adventure than that with
which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself--for he
has not wholly cast out the old Adam--he sees himself as he was that
memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
found courage to do what he did--he who has always thought so much, in a
hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.