Again the code of her upbringing banished her momentary hesitation.
"Unless," I said, "you have already——"
"Oh no!" she said, with quick frankness. "I only meant that I nearly always go alone, or else with Miss Windus."
"I'm sure Miss Windus can spare you for once. One doesn't get congratulated like this every day," I pressed.
She laughed merrily. "Some of us don't get it at all," she said. "With pleasure, Mr Jeffries."
I slapped Schmoller back into his place on the shelf, and went off, drunk with bliss, to get my hat and coat.
That night I walked with Evie for the first time to Woburn Place. Never had the Bloomsbury streets seemed so short, never the east side of the British Museum so few paces in length. I remember very little of what we talked about, I know she spoke of her visit to Guildford. The invitation, she gave me to understand, was really to her aunt, and it was to the subject of her aunt that she quickly returned when I insinuated a mention of Archie's name. I insinuated it again a minute later, but after that, noticing the way in which she came back to the aunt again, I forbore.
"But I'm afraid we can't ask the Merridews back, as we ought," she said, once more socially prescient. "We only have rooms in Woburn Place, you see, and you can't very well ask people all that way just to rooms, can you?"
"No," I replied briefly. I was thinking of my own late hospitality to Archie.
"We used to have a house, of course, before uncle died, and you know how poky rooms seem after that."