he got as far as that garden-gate. So the reasons in the letter held very good indeed; and how weak to be himself the first to fly in their face! But then weakness was his present portion, whereas the temptation grew stronger and stronger: only to see her face once more; only to hear her voice, although it lashed him with the reproaches he so richly deserved! Yet he did not give in without a kind of struggle. He had become a gambler, and a gambler’s compromise occurred to him now.
This was when the yellow London sun was setting, a little after seven o’clock; about twenty minutes past, several of the better-favoured pedestrians in Pall Mall were accosted by a timid ragamuffin with a ghastly face, who begged the loan of a penny, and was rightly treated to deaf ears. But at length a dapper young man, in a long bottle-green coat, wheeled round with an oath and a twinkling eye.
“Lend you one!” cried he. “I like that! What d’ye mean by it, eh?”
“What I say. I ask the loan of the smallest coin you’ve got—and your pardon for the liberty.”
“Pray when shall I see it again?”
“In half a minute.”
“Half a what? Well, you’re a rum ’un, you are; here’s your brown.”
“Thank you,” said Erichsen, and balanced it on his right thumbnail. “Now you stand by and see fair play. Heads I go and tails I don’t; sudden death; let it fall clear!”
His beggar’s manners (such as these were) had been forgotten on the instant. The coin rang upon the paving-stone with his words.
“Heads it is!” cried the owner, on his haunches, with his fine long coat in the dust.
