One night when she had waited late for Miles and he had not come, she went to Sophie’s Kitchen.
This was a dimly lighted little restaurant, with two rows of board tables down each wall, and an exotically foreign air, where the food was well-flavoured and not so expensive as in most of the show places of the section. She was very fond of Sophie, the proprietress, a whole-souled woman, discriminating in her intimates, with a soft, pleasing voice, and remarkably long, narrow hazel eyes.
As Moira seated herself at one of the tables she was conscious of a fashionable party across the room. Such people were not unusual in Sophie’s and she paid little attention to them. She saw the handsome proprietress in the open pantry at the back of the room and waved to her with a cry of greeting. Sophie replied by calling her name. Immediately afterward, Moira looked up to see a man coming toward her from the group she had spotted upon entering. He reached her table and thrust out his hand.
“Well, Rob Blaydon!” she cried.
“Moira.”
She had recognized him at once, but she looked him over more carefully as he sat down opposite her. He was stouter. She found herself experiencing a sensation she had never known before, that of meeting a youthful companion grown mature in her absence, one she was fond of. It wasn’t such an extraordinary sensation. It might have been only a few days ago when she was seeing Rob constantly. Nothing happened to people at all. Perhaps his face had changed a little, but whatever change there was she would have expected. Yes, she felt he was an even more wicked and human Rob than before.
“I’ll tell you what, Moira,” he went on at once. “I don’t care what you’ve got on hand to-night, you’ve got to spend the evening with me. If you will wait just a minute I’ll get away from these people on some pretext. I’ve simply got to talk to you, Moira. What do you say?”
“Go ahead, Rob, if you want to. I’d love it,” she replied with unaffected pleasure.
He came back in a few moments.
“Evidently they are used to your whims,” she said. “They don’t seem to mind.”