Peter felt that Mr. Zanti had a great deal that he would like to say to him, and once or twice he came to him and began "Oh, I say, boy," and then stopped with an air of confusion as though he had recollected something, suddenly.

There was a Russian girl, too, who was about the shop, uneasily on this day. She was thin, slight, very dark; fierce eyes and hands that seemed to be always curving. Her name was Maria Notroska and she was engaged to the big Russian, Oblotzky, whom Peter had seen, on other days up and down through the shop. She spoke to no one. She knew but little English--but she would stand for hours at the door looking out into the street. It was a long uneasy day and Peter was glad when the evening, in slow straight lines of golden light, came in through the black door.

The evening too seemed to bring forward a renewed hope of seeing Stephen again--enquiries could bring nothing from either Zanti or Herr Gottfried; they had never heard of the man, oh no!... Stephen Brant?

Stephen ...? No! Never--

That sudden springing out of the darkness had meant something however.

Peter could still feel his wet clothes and see his shining beard. Yes, if there were any trouble Stephen would be there. What were they all about? Peter closed the shutters of the shop that night without having any explanation to offer. Mr. Zanti was indeed a strange man; when Peter turned to go he stopped him with his hand on his shoulder: "Peter, boy,"

he said, whispering, "come upstairs--I have something to tell you."

Peter was about to follow him back into the shop when suddenly the man shook his head. "No, not to-night," he said and almost pushed him into the street.

Peter, looking back, saw that he was talking to the Russian girl.

But the day was not over with that. Wondering about Mr. Zanti, thinking that the boarding-house would be gloomy now after Mrs. Lazarus' death, recalling, above all, to himself every slightest incident of his meeting with Miss Rossiter, Peter, crossing Oxford Street, flung his broad body against a fat and soft one. There was nearly a collapse.

The other man and Peter grasped arms to steady themselves, and then behold! the fat body was Bobby Galleon's. Bobby Galleon, after all these years! But there could be no possible doubt about it. There he stood, standing back a little from the shock, his bowler hat knocked to one side of his head, a deprecating, apologetic smile on his dear fat face!

A man of course now, but very little altered in spite of all the years; a little fatter perhaps, his body seemed rather shapeless--but those same kind eyes, that large mouth and the clear straight look in all his face that spoke him to all the world for what he was. Peter felt exactly as though, after a long and tiring journey, he had tumbled at last into a large arm-chair. He was excited, he waved his arms:

"Bobby, Bobby," he cried, so loudly that two old women in bonnets, crossing the road like a couple of hens turned to look at him.

"I'm sorry--" Bobby said vaguely, and then slowly recognition came into his eyes.

"Peter!" he said in a voice lost in amazement, the colour flooding his cheeks.

It was all absurdly moving; they were quite ridiculously stirred, both of them. The lamps were coming out down Oxford Street, a pale saffron sky outlined the dark bulk of the Church that is opposite Mudie's shop and stands back from the street, a little as though it wondered at all the noise and clamour, a limpid and watery blue still lingered, wavering, in the evening sky.

They turned into an A.B.C. shop and ordered glasses of milk and they sat and looked at one another. They had altered remarkably little and to both of them, although the roar of the Oxford Street traffic was outside the window, it might have been, easily enough, that a clanging bell would soon summon them back to ink-stained desks and Latin exercises.

"Why, in heaven's name, did you ever get out of my sight so completely?

I wrote to Treliss again and again but I don't suppose anything was forwarded."

"They don't know where I am."

"But why did you never write to me?"

"Why should I? I wanted to do something first--to show you-"

"What rot! Is that friendship? I call that the most selfish thing I've ever known." No, obviously enough, Bobby could never understand that kind of thing. With him, once a friend always a friend, that is what life is for. With Peter, once an adventure always an adventure--_that_ is what life is for--but as soon as a friend ceases to be an adventure, why then--

But Bobby had not ceased to be an adventure. He was, as he sat there, more of one than he had ever been before.

"What have you been doing all these years?"

"Been in a bookshop."

"In a bookshop?"

"Yes, selling second-hand books."

"What else?"

"Oh reading a lot... seeing one or two people... and some music." Peter was vague; what after all had he been doing?

Bobby looked at him tenderly and affectionately. "You want seeing after--you look fierce, as you used to when you'd been having a bad time at school. The day they all hissed you."

"But I haven't been having a bad time. I've had a jolly good one. By the way," Peter leant forward, "have you seen or heard anything of Cards?"

Bobby coloured a little. "No, not for a long time. His mother died. He's a great swell now with heaps of money, I believe. I'm not his sort a bit."

They drank milk and beamed upon one another. Peter wanted to tell Bobby everything. That was one of his invaluable qualities, that one did like telling him everything. Talking to him eagerly now, Peter wondered how it could be that he'd ever managed to get through these many years without him. Bobby simply existed to help his friends and that was the kind of person that Peter had so often wanted.

But in it all--in their talking, their laughing together, their remembering certain catchwords that they had used together, there was nothing more remarkable than their finding each other exactly as they had been during those years before at Dawson's. Not even Bobby's tremendous statement could alter that.

"I'm married," he said.

"Married?"

Bobby blushed. "Yes--two years now--got a baby. She's quite splendid!"

"Oh!" Peter was a little blank. Somehow this did remove Bobby a little--it also made him, suddenly, strangely old.

"But it doesn't make any difference," Bobby said, leaning forward eagerly and putting his hand on Peter's arm--"not the least difference.

You two will simply get on famously. I've so often told her about you and we've always been hoping that you'd turn up again--and now she'll be simply delighted."

But it made a difference to Peter, nevertheless. He went back a little into his shell; Bobby with a home and a wife and a baby couldn't spare time, of course, for ordinary friends. But even here his conscience pricked him. Did he not know Bobby well enough to be assured that he was as firm and solid as a rock, that nothing at all could move or change him? And after all, was not he, Peter, wishing to be engaged and married and the father of a family and the owner of a respectable mansion?

Clare Elizabeth Rossiter! How glorious for an instant were the thin, sharp-faced waitresses, the little marble-topped tables, the glass windows filled with sponge-cakes and hard-boiled eggs!

Peter came out of his shell again. "I shall just love to come and see her," he said.

"Well, just as soon as you can. By Jove, old man, I'll never let you go again. Now tell me, everything--all that you have done since I saw you."

Peter told him a great deal--not quite everything. He told him nothing, for instance, about meeting a certain young lady on a Good Friday afternoon and he passed over some of the Scaw House incidents as speedily as possible.

"And since I came up to London," he went on, "the whole of my time has been spent either in the bookshop or the boarding-house. They're awfully good sorts at both, but it's all very uncertain of course and instead of writing a novel that no one will want to read I ought to have been getting on to editors. I've a kind of feeling that the bookshop's going to end very shortly."

"Let me see the book," said Bobby.

"Yes, certainly," said Peter.

"Anyhow, we go on together from this time forth--72 Cheyne Walk is my little house. When will you come--to-morrow?"

"Oh! To-morrow! I don't think I can. There are these Processions and things--I think I ought to be in the shop. But I'll come very soon. This is the name of my boarding-house--"

Bobby, as he saw his friend, broad-shouldered, swinging along, pass down the street with the orange lamps throwing chains of light about him, was confronted again by that old elusive spirit that he had known so well at school. Peter liked him, Peter was glad to see him again, but there were so many other Peters, so many doors closed against intruders.... Bobby would always, to the end, be for Peter, outside these doors. He knew it quite certainly, a little sadly, as he climbed on to his bus. What was there about Peter? Something hard, fierce, wildly hostile ... a devil, a God. Something that Bobby going quietly home to his comfortable dinner, might watch and guard and even love but something that he could never share.

Now, in the cool and quiet of the Chelsea Embankment as he walked to his door, Bobby sighed a little because life was so comfortable.