"So it will," he said. "To say nothing of your dinner. I know you had only sandwiches and tea for lunch. You have told me that when you go home you make yourself a chafing-dish supper. You must need a meal at this moment. Supposing—Miss Gray, will you do me the honour of dining with me?"
"Will you let me pay for my dinner? I am a working-woman, and expect to be treated like a man."
"If you insist. But I hope you will not insist."
She looked at him for a moment hesitatingly. There was no prudery about Mary Gray. She had become a woman of the world, and she had had no reason to distrust the camaraderie of men or to think it less than honest.
"Very well, then," she said, "if you will let me pay for your lunch another time."
"Why, so you shall," he answered. For a usually grave young man he laughed with an uncommon joyousness. "You shall give me one day a French lunch with a bottle of wine thrown in at one-and-sixpence. Mind, I must have the wine."
"You shall have the wine. But it isn't good form to talk about the price of a lunch you are invited to."
Laughing light-heartedly, they plunged into a labyrinth of dark streets. The west wind had brought a gentle rain with it now. It was benignant upon their faces, with a suggestion of grasses and spring flowers pushing their heads above the earth. They passed by the Soho restaurants, crowded to the doors. They found one at last in a more pretentious street.
Over the dinner they laughed and talked. There was something intoxicating to Robin Drummond's somewhat phlegmatic nature in their being together after this friendly fashion.
"You have a crease in your forehead, just above your nose," he said, while they waited for their salmon, the waiter having removed the plates from which they had eaten their bisque. "Have the Working Women been more unsatisfactory than usual to-day?"