“Come along, Charles,” she said briskly. “Let us have dinner.”
He could see the brightness of her eyes, looking past him; her lips had a fixed smile and he wished she would cry again. “She is crying inside,” he told himself. He moved forward beside her vaguely. The tenderness of his love for her was like a powerful, warm wave, sweeping over him and making him helpless for the time. He could do nothing against it, he had to be carried with it, but suddenly it receded, leaving him high and dry and unromantically in contact with a lamp-post. His hat had fallen off.
“What are you doing?” Henrietta asked irritably.
He rubbed his head. “Bumped it. I was thinking about you.”
“What were you thinking?” she asked defiantly.
“No, I’m not.” He stooped for his hat and picked it up. “Not,” he repeated strongly. “Here’s the place.” They had turned into a busy street. “I hope there won’t be a band.”
“I hope there will be. I want noises, hideous noises.”
“You’re going to get them,” he sighed as he pushed open the swing-door and received in his ears the fierce banging, braying and shrieking of various instruments played in a frenzy by a group of musicians confined, as if for the public safety, in a small gallery at the end of the room. Large and encumbered by the bag, he stood obstructing the waiters in the passage between the tables.
“They’re like wild beasts in a cage,” he said in the loud voice of his anger. “Can you stand it?”
“Oh, yes—yes. Let us sit here, in this corner.” He was ridiculous, she thought, yet to-night, unconscious of any absurdity himself, he had a dignity; he was not so ugly as she had thought; his somewhat protruding eyes had less vacancy, and though his tie was crooked, she was not ashamed of him. Nevertheless, she said as he sat down, “Charles, I’m going to London to-night. Get a time-table.”
“I must go to-night. I can’t go back to Radstowe.”
“Did you,” he asked unexpectedly, “leave a note on your dressing-table?”
“What?” She frowned. “No, of course not.”
“Oh, well, you can go back. We’re going to a concert together. It’s quite easy. I told you you were different from everybody else.” And then, remembering Rose’s words, he leaned across the table towards her. “The most beautiful and the best,” he said severely.