“Let’s go out,” he said. “For a walk....”
And he swept a sudden gesture round the sombre hall.
“Out of this, Pamela Star....”
CHAPTER IV
1
They walked. Dawn still lingered, and the night was gray and wan, yet it was clear with the clarity of scudding gray clouds far above the slower moving destinies of mankind. The pavements were dry, and the world was not yet conscious of this 2nd of May.
They walked up Park Lane, and the talk bubbled out of them; and they laughed at the things each said, for the things they said seemed funny to them.
They came to the Marble Arch, and their feet crossed the deserted place unbidden by them; and they stood at the corner where the wide place stretches out two fingers, one elegant and shapely towards Lancaster Gate beside the Park, the other lean and ugly up the Edgware Road towards the north. Every minute was tearing open the envelope of the night, and the gray clouds scudded frantically over London on their mystic and purposeless way.
“Our way is obvious!” cried Ivor to her inquiry. “Romance must plant its feet firmly on reality, for it’s life that makes us beautiful, not we that beautify life. So we will acknowledge our debt to life by walking up the ugly Edgware Road rather than towards the fat and horrid squares of Bayswater. Why, Pamela Star, anything might happen up the Edgware Road—even Cricklewood might happen, the legendary source of Bus 16!”
“I’ve got an aunt,” said Pamela Star, “who lives in Cricklewood. Fordwych Road. Aram and I used to go and see her often, and he flirted with her and she adored him. She’s knitting a muffler for him now. If she likes you she’ll knit one for you too....”