Jacob had endured a cheap dinner at a popular restaurant and circle seats at a music hall with uncomplaining good humour, but the evening, if anything, had increased his depression. He wandered into one of the clubs of which he was a member, only to find there was not a soul there whom he had ever seen before in his life. He came out within half an hour, but a spirit of unrest had seized him. Instead of going up to his rooms, he wandered into the foyer of the great hotel, in the private part of which his suite was situated, and watched the people coming out from supper. Again, as he sat alone, he was conscious of that feeling of isolation. Every man seemed to be accompanied by a woman who for the moment, at any rate, was content to give her whole attention to the task of entertaining her companion. There were little parties, older people some of them, but always with that connecting link of friendship and good-fellowship. Jacob sat grimly back in the shadows and watched. Perhaps it would have been better, he thought, if he had remained a poor traveller. He would have found some little, hardly used, teashop waitress, or perhaps the daughter of one of his customers, or a little shopgirl whom he had hustled in the Tube,—some one whose life might have touched his and brought into it the genial flavour of companionship. As it was—
“If it isn’t Mr. Pratt!”
He started. One of the very smartest of the little crowd who flowed around him had paused before his chair. He rose to his feet.
“Lady Powers!” he exclaimed.
“Ancient history,” she confided. “I have been married weeks—it seems ages. This is my husband—Mr. Frank Lloyd.”
Jacob found himself shaking hands with a vacuous-looking youth who turned away again almost immediately to speak to some acquaintances.
“You don’t bear me any ill-will, Mr. Pratt?”
“None except that broken dinner engagement,” he replied.
“I wrote to you,” she reminded him. “I did not dare to come after the way those others had behaved.”