"I know. 'Beware of pickpockets. No smoking.' They quote her in the lifts on the Tube. But then I'm not a pickpocket, and you are smoking. Besides, your picture knows mine very well. They've seen quite a lot of each other lately.
"Yes, but—"
"And then you know my picture a little, and I know yours by heart."
"You're quick to learn."
"Perhaps. But I do. I know every eyelash, long as they are. I believe I could say them. But then I was always good at poetry." This with a bow.
She rose and made the daintiest curtsey. "Would have been better," she said, resuming her seat in the depths of 'Luxury.' "But the skirts of to-day don't help."
"And my bow would have been deeper: but the braces I bought yesterday afternoon—"
"That'll do," she said, laughing. "Seriously, where is Mr. Larel, and why are you here?"
"George is probably scouring Battersea for a child he saw there last autumn with ears such as he has never beheld outside Khartoum. I am here, as you are, in the interest of Posterity."
"Did he tell you Thursday, too?"