“Thanks—I should like to,” laughed Gerald. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I promised to meet Halliday at the Pompadour. It’s a bad place, but there is nowhere else.”
“Where is it?” asked Gerald.
“Piccadilly Circus.”
“Oh yes—well, shall I come round there?”
“By all means, it might amuse you.”
The evening was falling. They had passed Bedford. Birkin watched the country, and was filled with a sort of hopelessness. He always felt this, on approaching London.
His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an illness.
“‘Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles
Miles and miles—’”
he was murmuring to himself, like a man condemned to death. Gerald, who was very subtly alert, wary in all his senses, leaned forward and asked smilingly: