Dinny raised her glass and sipped. The woman tossed hers off at a draught.

“I wanted that. Fancy a country where you couldn’t get a drink!”

“But they can, of course, and do.”

“You bet. But they say some of the liquor’s awful.”

Dinny saw that her gaze was travelling up and down her cloak and dress and face with insatiable curiosity.

“Pardon me,” said the woman, suddenly: “You got a date?”

“No, I’m going home after this.”

The woman sighed. “Wish she’d bring those bl-inkin’ cigarettes.”

The waitress reappeared with a bottle of stout and the cigarettes. Staring at Dinny’s hair, she opened the bottle.

“Coo!” said the woman, taking a long draw at her ‘Gasper,’ “I wanted that.”

“I’ll bring you the other things in a minute,” said the waitress.

“I haven’t seen you on the stage, have I?” said the woman.

“No, I’m not on the stage.”

The advent of food broke the ensuing hush. The coffee was better than Dinny had hoped and very hot. She had drunk most of it and eaten a large piece of plum cake before the woman, putting a pickled walnut in her mouth, spoke again.

“D’you live in London?”

“No. In Oxfordshire.”

“Well, I like the country, too; but I never see it now. I was brought up near Maidstone—pretty round there.” She heaved a sigh with a flavouring of stout. “They say the Communists in Russia have done away with vice—isn’t that a scream? An American journalist told me. Well! I never knew a budget make such a difference before,” she continued, expelling smoke as if liberating her soul: “Dreadful lot of unemployment.”

“It does seem to affect everybody.”

“Affects me, I know,” and she stared stonily. “I suppose you’re shocked at that.”

“It takes a lot to shock people nowadays, don’t you find?”

“Well, I don’t mix as a rule with bishops.”

Dinny laughed.

“All the same,” said the woman, defiantly, “I came across a parson who talked the best sense to me I ever heard; of course, I couldn’t follow it.”

“I’ll make you a bet,” said Dinny, “that I know his name. Cherrell?”

“In once,” said the woman, and her eyes grew round.

“He’s my uncle.”

“Coo! Well, well! It’s a funny world! And not so large. Nice man he was,” she added.

“Still is.”

“One of the best.”

Dinny, who had been waiting for those inevitable words, thought: ‘This is where they used to do the “My erring sister” stunt.’

The woman uttered a sigh of repletion.

“I’ve enjoyed that,” she said, and rose. “Thank you ever so. I must be getting on now, or I’ll be late for business.”

Dinny tinkled the bell. The waitress appeared with suspicious promptitude.

“The bill, please, and can you get me THAT changed?”

The waitress took the note with a certain caution.

“I’ll just go and fix myself,” said the woman; “see you in a minute.” She passed through a door.

Dinny drank up the remains of her coffee. She was trying to realise what it must be like to live like that. The waitress came back with the change, received her tip, said “Thank you, miss,” and went. Dinny resumed the process of realisation.

“Well,” said the woman’s voice behind her, “I don’t suppose I’ll ever see you again. But I’d like to say I think you’re a jolly good sort.”

Dinny looked up at her.

“When you said you’d come out without anything, did you mean you hadn’t anything to come out with?”

“Sure thing,” said the woman.

“Then would you mind taking this change? It’s horrid to have no money in London.”

The woman bit her lips, and Dinny could see that they were trembling.

“I wouldn’t like to take your money,” she said, “after you’ve been so kind.”

“Oh! bosh! Please!” And, catching her hand, she pressed the money into it. To her horror, the woman uttered a loud sniff. She was preparing to make a run for the door, when the woman said:

“D’you know what I’m going to do? I’m going home to have a sleep. My God, I am! I’m going home to have a sleep.”

Dinny hurried back to Sloane Street. Walking past the tall blinded houses, she recognised with gratitude that her love-sickness was much better. If she did not walk too fast, she would not be too soon at Mount Street. It was dark now, and in spite of the haze of city light the sky was alive with stars. She did not enter the Park again, but walked along its outside railings. It seemed an immense time since she had parted from Stack and the dog in Cork Street. Traffic was thickening as she rounded into Park Lane. To-morrow all these vehicles would be draining out to Epsom Downs; the Town would be seeming almost empty. And, with a sickening sensation, it flashed on her how empty it would always feel without Wilfrid to see or look forward to.

She came to the gate by the ‘jibbing barrel,’ and suddenly, as though all that evening had been a dream, she saw Wilfrid standing beside it. She choked and ran forward. He put out his arms and caught her to him.

The moment could hardly be prolonged, for cars and pedestrians were passing in and out; so arm-inarm they moved towards Mount Street. Dinny just clung to him, and he seemed equally wordless; but the thought that he had come there to be near her was infinitely comforting.

They escorted each other back and forth past the house, like some footman and housemaid for a quarter of an hour off duty. Class and country, custom and creed, all were forgotten. And, perhaps, no two people in all its seven millions were in those few minutes more moved and at one in the whole of London.

At last the comic instinct woke.

“We can’t see each other home all night, darling. So one kiss—and yet—one kiss—and yet—one kiss!”

She ran up the steps, and turned the key.

CHAPTER 21

Wilfred’s mood when he left his publisher at ‘The Jessamine’ was angry and confused. Without penetrating to the depths of Compson Grice’s mental anatomy, he felt that he had been manipulated; and the whole of that restless afternoon he wandered, swung between relief at having burnt his boats and resentment at the irrevocable. Thus preoccupied, he did not really feel the shock his note would be to Dinny, and only when, returning to his rooms, he received her answer did his heart go out to her, and with it himself to where she had fortuitously found him. In the few minutes while they paraded Mount Street, silent and half-embraced, she had managed to pass into him her feeling that it was not one but two against the world. Why keep away and make her more unhappy than he need? And he sent her a note by Stack next morning asking her to go ‘joy-riding.’ He had forgotten the Derby, and their car was involved almost at once in a stream of vehicles.

“I’ve never seen the Derby,” said Dinny. “Could we go?”

There was the more reason why they should go because there seemed to be no reasonable chance of not going.

Dinny was astonished at the general sobriety. No drinking and no streamers, no donkey-carts, false noses, badinage. Not a four-inhand visible, not a coster nor a Kate; nothing but a wedged and moving stream of motor ‘buses and cars mostly shut.

When, at last, they had ‘parked’ on the Downs, eaten their sandwiches and moved into the crowd, they turned instinctively toward the chance of seeing a horse.

Frith’s “Derby Day” seemed no longer true, if it ever was. In that picture people seemed to have lives and to be living them; in this crowd everybody seemed trying to get somewhere else.

In the paddock, which at first sight still seemed all people and no horses, Wilfrid said suddenly:

“This is foolish, Dinny; we’re certain to be seen.”

“And if we are? Look, there’s a horse!”

Quite a number of horses, indeed, were being led round in a ring. Dinny moved quickly towards them.

“They all look beautiful to me,” she said in a hushed voice, “and just as good one as the other—except this one; I don’t like his back.”