"You two seem to think of nothing but eating and drinking," said Jenny distastefully.
"Oh, no, we think of other things, don't we, Jack?" contradicted the older brother, with a sort of frigid relish.
"Rather," the younger one corroborated, looking sideways at Jenny.
"We must have a good time this winter," Arthur announced. "We needn't go back to Paris for a month or two. We must have a good time at our flat in Victoria."
"London's a much wickeder city than Paris," said Jack, addressing the air like some pontiff of vice. "I like these November nights with shapes of women looming up through the fog. A friend of mine——" As Jack Danby descended to personal reminiscence, he lost his sinister power and became mean and common. "When I say friend—I should say business friend, eh, Arthur?" he asked, smiling on the side of his face nearer to his brother. "Well, he's a lord as a matter of fact," he continued in accents of studied indifference.
"Tell the girls about him," urged his brother, and "Fill up your glasses," he murmured as, leaning back in his chair, he seemed to fade away into clouds of smoke blown from a very long, thin and black cigar.
"This lord—I won't tell you his name——" said Jack, "he wanders about in fogs until he meets a shape that attracts him. Then he hands her a velvet mask, and takes her home. What an imagination," chuckled the narrator.
"Well, I call him a dirty rotter," said Jenny.
"Do you?" asked Jack, as if struck by the novelty of such a point of view.
The lights were being extinguished now. The quenching of the orange illumination, and the barren waste of empty tables gave the grill-room a raffish look which consorted well with the personalities of the two brothers. The party broke up in the abrupt fashion of England, and within a few minutes of sitting comfortably round a richly lighted supper-table, the two girls were seated in a dark taxi on the way to Camden Town.