of mustard. After he had called for his reckoning he went, his
courage being high with meat and mustard, to the door, intending

to stand, with his legs wide apart and his hands deep in his
pockets, and stare boldly across the road. But just then the

other man in brown appeared in the gateway of the Golden Dragon
yard--it is one of those delightful inns that date from the

coaching days--wheeling his punctured machine. He was taking it
to Flambeau's, the repairer's. He looked up and saw Hoopdriver,

stared for a minute, and then scowled darkly.
But Hoopdriver remained stoutly in the doorway until the other

man in brown had disappeared into Flambeau's. Then he glanced
momentarily at the Golden Dragon, puckered his mouth into a

whistle of unconcern, and proceeded to wheel his machine into the
road until a sufficient margin for mounting was secured.

Now, at that time, I say, Hoopdriver was rather desirous than not
of seeing no more of the Young Lady in Grey. The other man in

brown he guessed was her brother, albeit that person was of a
pallid fairness, differing essentially from her rich colouring;

and, besides, he felt he had made a hopeless fool of himself. But
the afternoon was against him, intolerably hot, especially on the

top of his head, and the virtue had gone out of his legs to
digest his cold meat, and altogether his ride to Guildford was

exceedingly intermittent. At times he would walk, at times lounge
by the wayside, and every public house, in spite of Briggs and a

sentiment of economy, meant a lemonade and a dash of bitter. (For
that is the experience of all those who go on wheels, that

drinking begets thirst, even more than thirst begets drinking,
until at last the man who yields becomes a hell unto himself, a

hell in which the fire dieth not, and the thirst is not
quenched.) Until a pennyworth of acrid green apples turned the

current that threatened to carry him away. Ever and again a
cycle, or a party of cyclists, would go by, with glittering

wheels and softlyrunning chains, and on each occasion, to save
his self-respect, Mr. Hoopdriver descended and feigned some

trouble with his saddle. Each time he descended with less
trepidation.

He did not reach Guildford until nearly four o'clock, and then he
was so much exhausted that he decided to put up there for the

night, at the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern. And after he had
cooled a space and refreshed himself with tea and bread and

butter and jam,--the tea he drank noisily out of the saucer,--he
went out to loiter away the rest of the afternoon. Guildford is

an altogethercharming old town, famous, so he learnt from a
Guide Book, as the scene of Master Tupper's great historical

novel of Stephen Langton, and it has a delightful castle, all set
about with geraniums and brass plates commemorating the gentlemen

who put them up, and its Guildhall is a Tudor building, very
pleasant to see, and in the afternoon the shops are busy and the

people going to and fro make the pavements look bright and
prosperous. It was nice to peep in the windows and see the heads

of the men and girls in the drapers' shops, busy as busy, serving
away. The High Street runs down at an angle of seventy degrees to

the horizon (so it seemed to Mr. Hoopdriver, whose feeling for
gradients was unnaturally exalted), and it brought his heart into

his mouth to see a cyclist ride down it, like a fly crawling down
a window pane. The man hadn't even a brake. He visited the castle

early in the evening and paid his twopence to ascend the Keep.
At the top, from the cage, he looked down over the clustering red

roofs of the town and the tower of the church, and then going to
the southern side sat down and lit a Red Herring cigarette, and

stared away south over the old bramble-bearing, fern-beset ruin,
at the waves of blue upland that rose, one behind another, across

the Weald, to the lazy altitudes of Hindhead and Butser. His pale
grey eyes were full of complacency and pleasurable anticipation.

Tomorrow he would go riding across that wide valley.
He did not notice any one else had come up the Keep after him

until he heard a soft voice behind him saying: "Well, MISS
BEAUMONT, here's the view." Something in the accentpointed to a

jest in the name.
"It's a dear old town, brother George," answered another voice

that sounded familiar enough, and turning his head, Mr.
Hoopdriver saw the other man in brown and the Young Lady in Grey,

with their backs towards him. She turned her smiling profile
towards Hoopdriver. "Only, you know, brothers don't call their

sisters--"
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Hoopdriver. "Damn!" said

the other man in brown, quite audibly, starting as he followed
her glance.

Mr. Hoopdriver, with a fine air of indifference, resumed the
Weald. "Beautiful old town, isn't it?" said the other man in

brown, after a quite perceptible pause.
"Isn't it?" said the Young Lady in Grey.

Another pause began.
"Can't get alone anywhere," said the other man in brown, looking

round.
Then Mr. Hoopdriver perceived clearly that he was in the way, and

decided to retreat. It was just his luck of course that he should
stumble at the head of the steps and vanish with indignity. This

was the third time that he'd seen HIM, and the fourth time her.
And of course he was too big a fat-head to raise his cap to HER!

He thought of that at the foot of the Keep. Apparently they aimed
at the South Coast just as he did, He'd get up betimes the next

day and hurry off to avoid her--them, that is. It never occurred
to Mr. Hoopdriver that Miss Beaumont and her brother might do

exactly the same thing, and that evening, at least, the
peculiarity of a brother calling his sister "Miss Beaumont" did

not recur to him. He was much too preoccupied with an analysis of
his own share of these counter" target="_blank" title="vt.&n.偶然相遇；冲突">encounters. He found it hard to be

altogether satisfied about the figure he had cut, revise his
memories as he would.

Once more quite unintentionally he stumbled upon these two
people. It was about seven o'clock. He stopped outside a linen

draper's and peered over the goods in the window at the
assistants in torment. He could have spent a whole day happily at

that. He told himself that he was trying to see how they dressed
out the brass lines over their counters, in a purely professional

spirit, but down at the very bottom of his heart he knew better.
The customers were a secondaryconsideration, and it was only

after the lapse of perhaps a minute that he perceived that among
them was--the Young Lady in Grey! He turned away from the window

at once, and saw the other man in brown standing at the edge of
the pavement and regarding him with a very curious expression of

face.
There came into Mr. Hoopdriver's head the curious problem whether

he was to be regarded as a nuisance haunting these people, or
whether they were to be regarded as a nuisance haunting him. He

abandoned the solution at last in despair, quite unable to decide
upon the course he should take at the next counter" target="_blank" title="vt.&n.偶然相遇；冲突">encounter, whether he

should scowl savagely at the couple or assume an attitude
eloquent of apology and propitiation.

THE IMAGININGS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER'S HEART
X

Mr. Hoopdriver was (in the days of this story) a poet, though he
had never written a line of verse. Or perhaps romancer will

describe him better. Like I know not how many of those who do the
fetching and carrying of life,--a great number of them

certainly,--his real life was absolutely uninteresting, and if he
had faced it as realistically as such people do in Mr. Gissing's

novels, he would probably have come by way of drink to suicide in
the course of a year. But that was just what he had the natural

wisdom not to do. On the contrary, he was always decorating his
existence with imaginative tags, hopes, and poses, deliberate and

yet quite effectual self-deceptions; his experiences were mere
material for a romantic superstructure. If some power had given

Hoopdriver the 'giftie' Burns invoked, 'to see oursels as ithers
see us,' he would probably have given it away to some one else at

the very earliest opportunity. His entire life, you must
understand, was not a continuousromance, but a series of short