Kipps, page 239 by H.G. Wells
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If he parleyed with her Helen might awake to his desperate attempt.
'Of course, if you must go.'
'It's something I've forgotten,' said Kipps, beginning to feel regrets. 'Reely, I must.'
Mrs. Botting turned with a certain offended dignity, and Ann, in a state of flushed calm that evidently concealed much, came forward to open the door.
'I'm very sorry,' he said. 'I'm very sorry,' half to his hostess and half to her, and was swept past her by superior social forces--like a drowning man in a mill-race--and into the Upper Sandgate Road. He half turned upon the step, and then slam went the door...
He retreated along the Leas, a thing of shame and perplexity, Mrs. Botting's aggrieved astonishment uppermost in his mind...
Something--reinforced by the glances of the people he was passing--pressed its way to his attention through the tumultuous disorder of his mind.
He became aware that he was still wearing his little placard with the letters 'Cypshi.'
'Desh it!' he said, clutching off this abomination. In another moment its several letters, their task accomplished, were scattering gleefully before the breeze down the front of the Leas.
2
Kipps was dressed for Mrs. Wace's dinner half an hour before it was time to start, and he sat waiting until Coote should come to take him round. Manners and Rules of Good Society lay beside him neglected. He had read the polished prose of the Member of the Aristocracy on page 96 as far as,--
'the acceptance of an invitation is, in the eyes of diners out, a binding obligation which only ill-health, family bereavement, or some all-important reason justifies its being set on one side or otherwise evaded'-- and then he had lapsed into gloomy thoughts.
That afternoon he had had a serious talk with Helen.
He had tried to express something of the change of heart that had happened to him. But to broach the real state of the matter had been altogether too terrible for him. He had sought a minor is