CHAPTER XI--AND VISITS THE PAST.
On a Tuesday evening after dining at his club Soames set out to do what required more courage and perhaps less delicacy than anything he had yet undertaken in his life--save perhaps his birth, and one other action.
He chose the evening, indeed, partly because Irene was more likely to be in, but mainly because he had failed to find sufficient resolution by daylight, had needed wine to give him extra daring.
He left his hansom on the Embankment, and walked up to the Old Church, uncertain of the block of flats where he knew she lived.

He found it hiding behind a much larger mansion; and having read the name, 'Mrs.
Irene Heron'-- Heron, forsooth! Her maiden name: so she used that again, did she ?--he stepped back into the road to look up at the windows of the first floor.

Light was coming through in the corner fiat, and he could hear a piano being played.

He had never had a love of music, had secretly borne it a grudge in the old days when so often she had turned to her piano, making of it a refuge place into which she knew he could not enter.

Repulse! The long repulse, at first restrained and secret, at last open! Bitter memory came with that sound.