She rose, with a little shrug of the shoulders, and held out her hand.
“I must go,” she said. “I am lunching early.”
“May I walk a little way with you?” he begged.
She hesitated. After all, perhaps, it was a phase of snobbery to dislike being seen with him—something of that same feeling which she had never failed to remark in him.
“If you please,” she answered. “I am going to take a taximeter at the Park gates.”
“I will walk with you as far as there,” he said.
He tried to talk to her on ordinary topics, but he felt at once a disadvantage. He knew so little of the people, the little round of life in which she lived. Before they reached the gates they had relapsed into silence.
“It is foolish of me,” he said, as he called a taximeter, “to come here simply in the hope of seeing you, to beg for a few words, and to go away more miserable than ever.”
She shrugged her shoulders.