"I am going further. I am staying with my uncle Solon in Bayswater," said Irene.
"Let me drive you back."
"I'd much better drive you back to your hotel; I've got a car."
"Well, as a matter of fact, I want to talk to you," said Lewis, bluntly.
"Very well, then."
They went out together and crossed the road through the lunch-time traffic, through the crush of lorries and buses wedged together like pack ice and loaded to bursting point, in the canyon-like streets, between the streams of people emitted from the offices to be swallowed up underground or to lunch standing up in bars and in A.B.C. tea shops.
They got out at Knightsbridge Barracks. The last of the morning riders were coming in, and already the afternoon hacks, loose-jointed, with lack-lustre coats and harness, smelling of the livery stable, were taking possession of the Row. They went obliquely across the grass dotted with big trees, whose branches were as regular as those of genealogical trees; English girls wearing imitation amber necklaces were going home, with novels bound in green cloth under moist armpits, accompanied by long limp youths who walked with bent knees, carrying their hats in their hands.
"Just now in that office you frightened me even more than you did in Sicily," said Lewis.
"And now?"
"Not so much now. When you are doing nothing you are much more like other women. I've often thought of you.... Are you romantic?"