Now
he enjoyed every brick and board of it; he trod the broken, aromatic
shingles of the roadway with pleasure; he tramped up the broad
stairs and down the dark hall of the block with anticipation; he
breathed the compounded office odour of ledgers, cocoa matting, and
old cigar smoke in a long, reminiscent whiff; he took his seat at
his roll-top desk, enchanted to be again in these homely though
familiar surroundings.
"Hanged if I know what's struck me," he mused. "Never experienced
any remarkable joy before in getting back to this sort of truck."
Then, with a warm glow at the heart, the realisation was brought to
him. This was home, and over yonder, under the shadow of the
heaven-pointing spire, a slip of a girl was waiting for him.
He tried to tell her this when next he saw her.
"I felt that I ought to make you a little shrine, and burn candles
to you, the way the Catholics do--"
"To the Mater Dolorosa?" she mocked.
He looked at her dark eyes so full of the sweetness of content, at
her sensitive lips with the quaintly upturned corners, and he
thought of what her home life had been and of the real sorrow that
even yet must smoulder somewhere down in the deeps of her being.
"No," said he slowly, "not that.
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