After his visit to Kingsbridge Manor he had fallen into the pit of a black depression. Seeing Maisie had raised old ghosts, and since she rejected him again the ghosts had haunted him without respite.
He had been able to live through the daytime, for at work there were challenges and problems to take his mind off his grief: he was busy organizing the joint enterprise with Madler and Bell, which the Pilasters partners had finally approved. And he was soon to become a partner himself, something he had dreamed of. But in the evenings he had no enthusiasm for anything. He was invited to a great many parties, balls and dinners, for he was a member of the Marlborough Set by virtue of his friendship with Solly, and he often went, but if Maisie was not there he was bored and if she was he was miserable. So most evenings he sat in his rooms thinking about her, or walked the streets hoping against all likelihood to bump into her.
It was on the street that he had met Nora. He had gone to Peter Robinson's in Oxford Street--a shop that had once been a linen draper's but was now called a "department store"--to get a present for his sister Dotty: he planned to take the train to Folkestone immediately afterwards. But he was so miserable that he did not know how he was going to face his family, and a kind of paralysis of choice made him incapable of selecting a gift. He came out empty-handed as it was getting dark, and Nora literally bumped into him. She stumbled and he caught her in his arms.
He would never forget how it had felt to hold her. Even though she was wrapped up, her body was soft and yielding, and she smelled warm and scented. For a moment the cold, dark London street vanished and he was in a closed world of sudden delight. Then she dropped her purchase, a pottery vase, and it smashed on the pavement. She gave a cry of dismay and looked as if she might burst into tears. Hugh naturally insisted on buying a replacement.
She was a year or two younger than he, twenty-four or twenty-five. She had a pretty round face with sandy-blond curls poking out from a bonnet, and her clothes were cheap but pleasing: a pink wool dress embroidered with flowers and worn over a bustle, and a tight-fitting French-navy velvet jacket trimmed with rabbit fur. She spoke with a broad cockney drawl.
