It was what Macmaster had said. He must have got it from Mrs. Micawber!
Christopher Tietjens—in his shabby khaki, for his wife had spoilt his best uniform—spoke suddenly from behind her back. He had approached her from beyond the pulpit of the two commissionaires and she had been turned towards Mark on his bench:
"Come along! Let's get out of this!" He was, she asked herself, getting out of this! Towards what?
Like mutes from a funeral—or as if she had been, between the brothers, a prisoner under escort—they walked down steps; half righted towards the exit arch; one and a half righted to face Whitehall. The brothers grunted inaudible but satisfied sounds over her head. They crossed, by the islands, Whitehall, where the 'bus had brushed her skirt. Under an archway—
In a stony, gravelled majestic space the brothers faced each other. Mark said:
"I suppose you won't shake hands!"
Christopher said:
"No! Why should I?" She herself had cried out to Christopher:
"Oh, do!" (The wireless squares overhead no longer concerned her. Her brother was, no doubt, getting drunk in a bar in Piccadilly. . . . A surface coarseness!)
Mark said: