“Oh, but I must go back and ask mother first,” she says.
“Really?”
“Of course; it’s very nice of her to let me out at all. I must go back and ask her.”
And he admires this sense of duty, which is probably only an excuse for a change of frock. And so she returns home to tell her mother how well everything is going, while he goes to the little Soho restaurant to engage a table; and then, while he is waiting for her, he makes a horrible discovery. He has only a pound left; what is he to do? He picks up the menu, and sees that it will be impossible for him to dine in anything like the way he wishes for less than thirty shillings. He is a stranger; the restaurant will not give him credit. There is no one to whom he can go to for a loan; he cannot ask the girl, on their first day together, to lend him money. And so, all through the dinner there hangs over his head the menace of that piece of folded paper. What will happen to him? He remembers seeing once in Manchester the proprietor pitch an impecunious client headlong into the street. They could hardly do that to him. He would be too big, but he will be disgraced in the girl’s eyes. He has not the presence to carry off such a scene with honour. He will stammer and mumble, and try to explain, and look foolish; probably in the end he will leave his watch in bail, while the girl will stand by him, ashamed of him and contemptuous.
He tries to make the meal last as long as possible; they have coffee and two liqueurs and endless cigarettes; but the moment comes at last when she begins to button on her gloves and collect her things.
“I really must go now,” she says, “and it has been such a lovely evening. Thank you so much.”
And he looks in misery at the piece of folded paper. Then, just as he is preparing to signal to the waiter and ask for an interview with the patron, the temptation comes: her bag lies open facing him; she is looking the other way. He sees money. Here is the way out; perhaps she will not notice that she has lost it. She is rich. At any rate, he must run the risk. And, as she tidies her hair in the glass, she sees him take her money.
She is shocked, terribly shocked, but it is easy to understand her silence; her curiosity is whetted, she is interested in the young man, and guesses that one day it may very well be that she will feel more than interest for him. Money is of no great concern to her.
Yes, I could see the scene clearly enough; it would provide me with excellent opportunities for dramatic dialogue; the growing uneasiness of the man with the girl’s gradual appreciation of it and wonder at the cause of it, the hope, perhaps, that it is the beginning of love. A good scene, but it would be impossible not to write a good scene with such a setting and such an episode. But, even as I saw it, I knew that it would be no good. To what climax would it work: to nothing but the old cliché—“I knew it all along.” It would be kept as a surprise, of course; the reader would not be told that the girl had seen the theft reflected in the looking-glass. The story would describe the progress of their courtship; the heart-searchings of the young man. “If I tell her, will she despise me?” How the machinery would creak, how often it has been done before; and at last the stage would be set for the confession.
“I have something terrible to tell you, dear.”