"You really have thought of me, then?"
"Didn't you always know that I should?"
"Perhaps," she admitted. "Anyhow, I always felt that we should meet again, that you would come to London. The problem is," she added, smiling, "what to do with you now you are here."
"I haven't come to be a nuisance," he assured her. "I just want a little help from you."
She became indiscreet. She looked at him with a little smile at the corners of her lips.
"Nothing else?" she asked, almost under her breath.
"At the end of it all, yes," he answered simply. "I want to understand because it is your world. I want to feel myself nearer to you. I want—"
She gripped at his arm suddenly. She knew well enough that she had deliberately provoked his words, but there was a look in her face almost of fear.
"Don't let us be too serious all at once," she begged quickly. "If you have one fault, my dear big friend from the country," she went on, with a swiftly assumed gaiety, "it is that you are too serious for your years. Sophy and I between us must try to cure you of that! You see, we have arrived."
He handed her out, followed her across the pavement, and found himself plunged into what seemed to him to be an absolute vortex of human beings, all dressed in very much the same fashion, all laughing and talking together very much in the same note, all criticising every fresh group of arrivals with very much the same eyes and manner. The palm-court was crowded with little parties seated at the various round tables, partaking languidly of the most indolent meal of the day. Even the broad passageway was full of men and women, standing about talking or looking for tables. One could scarcely hear the music of the orchestra for the babel of voices.