Evadne started visibly, looked at him, and shrank two steps away; but she answered, in a voice which I could hardly recognise as hers, it was so high and strident; "I should call it a chilly night," she said.
"Well, yes, perhaps," he answered, "for the time of the year. Are you going for a walk?"
"I—I don't know," she replied, looking doubtfully on ahead.
She was walking at a pretty rapid rate as it was, and her elderly interlocutor had some difficulty in keeping up with her.
"Perhaps if we turned down one of these side streets to the left, it would be quieter, and we could talk," he suggested.
"I don't think I want either to be quiet or to talk," she said, suddenly recovering her natural voice and tone.
"Well, what do you want, then?" he asked.
She looked up at him, and slackened her speed. "Perhaps, since you are so good as to trouble yourself about me at all," she said, "I may venture to ask if you will kindly tell me where in London I am?"
His manner instantly changed. "You are in Regent Street," he answered.
"And that lighted place behind us, where the crowd is—what is that?"