Edgar flees the Horsey Street studio and is arrested is a turning point in Edgar Stark’s pursuit of Stella Raphael: after she leaves the loft, he abandons the work he had made there, evades the police, and vanishes into a fugitive life before being caught on his way to her. The sequence ends not with a reunion but with his return to the hospital, where Peter Cleave still cannot determine whether Edgar meant to take Stella away or kill her.

Background and Flight

After Stella left Horsey Street, Edgar remained in the loft for three days, working without rest on the head he was making. On the fourth day, an unidentified visitor apparently warned him that the police were coming. Edgar fled with a few clothes and books stuffed into a duffel bag. His departure was timed with bitter irony: the police arrived only a few minutes after he had gone, and Stella appeared at the studio only after they were there.

The studio’s contents were impounded. Among the work left behind were drawings made while Stella was with him and the head itself, objects that drew Peter’s particular interest because they might illuminate Edgar’s state of mind and whereabouts. The artistic work thus remained as a material trace of the relationship even as its maker disappeared.

Disappearance and Pursuit

After leaving the studio, Edgar disappeared. Peter believed that an underground network of artists and criminals sheltered and fed him in the following weeks. Reports suggested that he moved repeatedly between studios and flats. One report placed him in a remote cottage near the sea in Cornwall; Peter’s own hunch was that Edgar stayed in London, where he knew his way around. These possibilities remain conjectural in Peter’s account rather than a settled itinerary.

Edgar eventually went north to look for Stella. Peter later learned that he had been picked up in Chester while on his way to her. The account leaves the purpose of that journey unresolved: Peter had not been able to establish whether Edgar intended to carry Stella off or murder her. His arrest therefore stops the physical pursuit without resolving the danger Peter associates with it.

Arrest and Return to the Hospital

Edgar was readmitted to the hospital in April. Peter kept him alone in a room on the top ward of the Refractory Block, a placement Peter says was not intended as punishment. He wanted a thorough psychiatric evaluation and a treatment plan before handing Edgar over to a new doctor, but Edgar consistently refused to speak to him.

That silence left Peter with an urgent practical problem and an unresolved personal one. He needed to assess Edgar before his own departure, but he also wanted to know what Edgar now felt toward Stella and why he had tracked her to Chester. In an attempt to provoke a response, Peter eventually told Edgar that he was engaged to Stella, bluntly and without delicacy. Edgar’s flight had ended in custody, but his intentions—and the meaning of his pursuit—remained unsettled.

Significance

The escape reverses the apparent ending of Stella’s time with Edgar. Her departure from the loft does not end his attachment; instead, it sends him into hiding and then north after her. The near-miss at the studio, where police and Stella arrive only minutes after he has fled, sharpens the separation between them while making his pursuit feel immediate.

The episode also leaves the reader with the limits of Peter’s knowledge. He can describe Edgar’s movements only in fragments, distinguishing reports from his own hunches, and cannot say whether Edgar sought reunion or violence. The later arrest and readmission contain the flight, but do not provide the certainty Peter wants about the man he has treated for years.