“For a day or two I haven’t felt at all well,” he continued gloomily. “I thought a drive might do me good.”
“Certainly. I hope it will. When would you like to have dinner?”
“I never care to alter the hours. Of course I shall be back at the usual time. Shall you be?”
“Oh yes—long before dinner.”
So she got away without any explanation. At a quarter to four she reached the block of flats in which the Bevises (and Everard Barfoot) resided. With a fluttering of the heart, she went very quietly upstairs, as if anxious that her footsteps should not be heard; her knock at the door was timid.
Bevis in person opened to her.
“Delighted! I thought it might be—”
She entered, and walked into the first room, where she had been once before. But to her surprise it was vacant. She looked round and saw Bevis’s countenance gleaming with satisfaction.
“My sisters will be here in a few minutes,” he said. “A few minutes at most. Will you take this chair, Mrs. Widdowson? How delighted I am that you were able to come!”
So perfectly natural was his manner, that Monica, after the first moment of consternation, tried to forget that there was anything irregular in her presence here under these circumstances. As regards social propriety, a flat differs in many respects from a house. In an ordinary drawing-room, it could scarcely have mattered if Bevis entertained her for a short space until his sisters’ arrival; but in this little set of rooms it was doubtfully permissible for her to sit tete-a-tete with a young man, under any excuse. And the fact of his opening the front door himself seemed to suggest that not even a servant was in the flat. A tremor grew upon her as she talked, due in part to the consciousness that she was glad to be thus alone with Bevis.