The girl, a pretty little thing, but utterly mediocre and uninteresting, was clinging to the officer's arm, a second lieutenant in the Tank Corps.
"Do you think we ought to take a taxi, Bill? Let's go on a 'bus. . . ."
"No damn fear," returned Bill. "Let's blow the lot while we're about it. I'm going back to-morrow. . . ."
Then Vane pushed past them, with that brief snapshot of a pair of lives photographed on his brain. And it would have effaced itself as quickly as it had come, but for the very new wedding ring he had seen on the girl's left hand—so new that to conceal it with a glove was simply not to be thought of.
Money—money—money; was there no getting away from it?
"Its value will not be measured by material things. It will leave nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. . . ." And as the words of Oscar Wilde came to his mind Vane laughed aloud.
"This is London, my lad," he soliloquised. "London in the twentieth century. We've a very nice war on where a man may develop his personality; fairy tales are out of date."
He strolled on past the Ritz—his mind still busy with the problem. Joan wanted to marry money; Joan had to marry money. At least he had gathered so. He had asked Margaret to marry him; she had said that in time she would—if he still wanted her. At least he had gathered so. Those were the major issues.
The minor and more important one—because minor ones have a way of influencing the big fellows out of all proportion to their size—was that he had asked Joan to tea.
He sighed heavily and turned up Half Moon Street. Whatever happened afterwards he had his duty as a host to consider first. He decided to go in and talk to the worthy Mrs. Green, and see if by any chance that stalwart pillar would be able to provide a tea worthy of the occasion. Mrs. Green had a way with her, which seemed to sweep through such bureaucratic absurdities as ration cards and food restrictions. Also, and perhaps it was more to the point, she had a sister in Devonshire who kept cows.