She laughed. “Charles, you’re hopeless.”
“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.”
“Soup first,” he said.
“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.”