For answer she flung her arms again about him and hugged him. Her heart was beating furiously. Then without another word she left him.
IV
He could not go back to Harley Street yet. The sense of apprehension that had been growing with him all day would give him a melancholy evening, were he to spend it alone. He thought of Brun. Someone had told him that the little man was in London.
He found him in his rooms, reading, with a cynical expression on his face, a French review.
"I came to see—" said Christopher, "whether you happened to be free to-night and would dine with me. I'm a pessimist for once this evening and it doesn't suit me!"
Brun was very, very sorry, but he was dining with a Russian princess; it was most tiresome that he should have to waste his time with a Russian princess when he'd come over to London on this occasion expressly to study the English people at this interesting crisis of their affairs, but there it was—he'd no idea how he'd let himself in for it, and how much rather would he spend the evening with his friend, Christopher.
Christopher said that he would smoke one cigarette and that then he must go.
"And so you feel pessimistic?" said Brun, looking at Christopher curiously—"It's the war, Je crois bien—How alike you all are!"
"No," said Christopher, "I don't think the war's much to do with it. I dare say the war's a very good thing for all of us."