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LXXVII

fter lunching in the basement of the Medical School
APhilip went back to his rooms. It was Saturday after-
noon, and the landlady was cleaning the stairs.
‘Is Mr. Griffiths in?’ he asked.
‘No, sir. He went away this morning, soon after you went
out.’
‘Isn’t he coming back?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. He’s taken his luggage.’
Philip wondered what this could mean. He took a book
and began to read. It was Burton’s Journey to Meccah, which
he had just got out of the Westminster Public Library; and
he read the first page, but could make no sense of it, for his
mind was elsewhere; he was listening all the time for a ring
at the bell. He dared not hope that Griffiths had gone away
already, without Mildred, to his home in Cumberland. Mil-
dred would be coming presently for the money. He set his
teeth and read on; he tried desperately to concentrate his at-
tention; the sentences etched themselves in his brain by the
force of his effort, but they were distorted by the agony he
was enduring. He wished with all his heart that he had not
made the horrible proposition to give them money; but now
that he had made it he lacked the strength to go back on it,
not on Mildred’s account, but on his own. There was a mor-
bid obstinacy in him which forced him to do the thing he

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