When they got to Hertford Street he reminded her that she had said she would go with him that evening to The Immortal Hour, and Catherine, sobered by having heard herself once more called by George’s pet name, as if George from his grave were using this young man as a trumpet through which to blow her a warning of the perils of her behaviour, thanked him in a subdued and rather conscience-stricken voice, and said she was too tired to go out again.
Christopher’s face fell to a length that was grotesque. ‘But I’ve been counting on it!’ he cried. ‘And you said——’
‘Well, but this afternoon was instead. And how lovely it was. I think for a change even more lovely than The Immortal Hour. Those crocuses with the sun slanting through them——’
‘Never mind the crocuses,’ interrupted Christopher. ‘Do you mean to say I’m not going to see you again to-night?’
‘Oh, aren’t you a baby,’ she said, unable not to laugh at his face of despair.
He was walking up the stairs to her flat beside her, her wrap on his arm. He had refused to give it to her downstairs, because as long as he held on to that he couldn’t, he judged, be sent away.
‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he said. ‘It isn’t a bit funny to be separated from you.’
Her face was instantly grave again. ‘I couldn’t go anywhere to-night,’ she said, taking out her latchkey, ‘because I’m beginning to have one of my headaches.’
‘And I’m beginning to think,’ he said quickly, ‘that those headaches are things you get directly I say anything a little—anything the least approaching what I feel. Look here, I’ll do that,’ he went on, taking the key from her and opening the door. ‘Isn’t it true, now, about the headaches?’
He was becoming unmanageable. She must apply severity. So she held out her hand, the door being opened, and said good-bye. ‘Thank you so very much,’ she said with immense politeness. ‘It has been delicious. You were too kind to think of it. Thank you a thousand times.’