At seventeen a beloved gone for an hour is a beloved gone for ever.

She rushed to the foot of the stairs on which his ascending steps still creaked.
"Paul!" "Yes." "Come back! Do come back!" Paul came back and followed her into the parlour.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He graciously forgave her, having already arrived at the mature conclusion that females were unaccountable folk whose excursions into unreason should be regarded by man with pitying indulgence.

And, in spite of the seriousness with which he took himself, he was a sunny-tempered youth.
Barney Bill, putting into the Port of London, so to speak, in order to take in cargo, also visited the theatre towards the end of the run of the piece.

He waited, by arrangement, for Paul outside the stage door, and Paul, coming out, linked arms and took him to a blazing bar in Piccadilly Circus and ministered to his thirst, with a princely air.
"It seems rum," said Bill, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, after a mighty pull at the pint tankard--"it seems rum that you should be standing me drinks at a swell place like this.

It seems only yesterday that you was a two-penn'orth of nothing jogging along o' me in the old 'bus." "I've moved a bit since then, haven't I ?" said Paul.
"You have, sonny," said Barney Bill.