They never heed him; how should they?
But a turn of the umbrella gives him a momentary glimpse of them, and in that glimpse poor hapless Jeffreys recognises Raby and Scarfe! Surely this blow was not needed to crush him completely! Scarfe! How long he stood, statue-like, looking down the path by which they had gone neither he nor any one else could tell.

But it was dark when he was roused by a harsh voice in front of him.
"Come, sheer off, young fellow! It's time you was out of the park!" "Yes, I'll go," said he, and walked slowly to the gate.
It was ridiculous of him, of course, to writhe as he did under that chance meeting.

What else could he have expected?
A hundred times already he had told himself she had forgotten all about him, or, worse still, she remembered him only to despise him.

And a hundred times, too, he had seen her in fancy beside the enemy who had stabbed him.
For Scarfe might have spared his precaution in begging Mrs Rimbolt not to name him as Jeffreys' accuser.

Jeffreys needed no telling to whom he owed his ruin, and he needed no telling the reason why.
That reason had made itself clear this afternoon, at any rate, and as the wretched outcast wandered out into the night, it seemed as if the one ray of light which yesterday had glimmered for him, even across the darkness, was now quenched for ever, and that there was nothing left either to hope or dread.
He could not quit the park, but wandered round and round it, outside its inhospitable palings, covering mile after mile of wet pavement, heedless of the now drenching rain, heedless of his hunger, heedless of his failing limbs.
The noisy streets had grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal.
It was too dark to see the water below, but he heard the hard rain hissing on its surface.
He had stood there before, in happier days, and wondered how men and women could choose, as they sometimes did, to end their misery in that narrow streak of sluggish water.
He wondered less now.