* * *
Then, six months after, in a solitude of stars and palms, with a hot wind blowing over the plains:
"O Lord, to see the dear old Strand now!"
The big stars shine, the moon swings up above the distant hills, and the old love comes back into the heart of the lonely man....
Women and Tea
A tea-shop is a delightful place. It is the milestone that marks the end of a day's work.
In the provinces, and particularly in the north and in Scotland, where men take tea with passionate sincerity, frequently starting with sardines and ending with apple tart, the tea-shop occupies an appropriately massive position in daily life. London's tea-shops are, however, talk-shops, refuges from a day's shopping, trysting-places after a terrible eight hours' separation.
O, the eyes that meet over a muffin every afternoon in London; the hands that thrill to a casual touch beneath the crumpet plate....
London's tea-shops are of many kinds, from the standardized shop to the good pull-up for millionaires constructed on the Paris plan, where slim Gruyère sandwiches hide in paper coats, and cakes taste of Benedictine, and bills have a queer habit of working out at fifteen shillings.