‘Oh, but I always go by tube,’ she said, clutching at him a moment as some people pushing past threw her against him.
‘You can’t go by tube to-night. Not in this rain. And you look frightfully tired.’
She glanced up at him oddly and laughed a little. ‘Do I?’ she said. ‘Well, I’m not. Not a bit tired. And I can quite well go by tube. It’s quite close.’
‘You can’t do anything of the sort. Stand here out of the rain while I get a taxi.’ And off he ran.
For a moment she was on the verge of running off herself, going to the tube as usual and getting home her own way, for why should she be forced into an expensive taxi? Then she thought: ‘No—it would be low of me, simply low. I must try and behave like a little gentleman——’ and waited.
‘Where shall I tell him to go to?’ asked Christopher, having got his taxi and put her inside it and simply not had the courage to declare it was his duty to see her safely home.
She told him the address—90A Hertford Street—and he wondered a moment why, living in such a street with the very air of Park Lane wafted down it from just round the corner, she should not only not have a car but want to go in tubes.
‘Can I give you a lift?’ she asked, leaning forward at the last moment.
He was in the taxi in a flash. ‘I was so hoping you’d say that,’ he said, pulling the door to with such vigour that a shower of raindrops jerked off the top of the window-frame on to her dress.
These he had to wipe off, which he did with immense care, and a handkerchief that deplorably was not one of his new ones. She sat passive while he did it, going over the evening’s performance, pointing out, describing, reminding, and he, as he dried, told himself definitely that he had had enough of The Immortal Hour. She must stop, she must stop. He must talk to her, must find out more about her. He was burning to know more about her before the infernally fast taxi arrived at her home. And she would do nothing, as they bumped furiously along, but quote and ecstasise.