The lower end of Regent Street may be a far from lonely spot in which to take up one's abode; but there is nothing so empty as an empty room, no matter on to what crowded thoroughfare it may look.

Say, then, it was a combination of impulses, the woman and the moment--the girl pretty and the man oppressed by a sense of loneliness.

Whatever it was, he stood there, without any apparent intention of moving, and watched her.
She was the last, amongst all those workers who could be seen within the lighted apertures of the windows, to leave her post.

One by one they performed their weary play of actions, the shutting up of ledgers, the putting away of papers--out went the lights, and a moment later dim figures stole out of the darkened doorways into the drizzling rain, and hurried away into the shadows of the streets.
But she still remained, and the man, with a certain amount of dogged persistence, continued to watch her movements.

Once he took out his watch, as his impatience became more insistent.