"Let's go and have some tea," he went on.
"I've had mine, thanks!..."
"Well, have some more. I've not had any!..."
"I don't think I can, thanks. I've really come to say that I can't!..."
"There's a little place near here," he interrupted hurriedly, "where they give you lovely home-made bread. I found it one day when I was wandering about. We'll just go there and talk about whatever you want to say. Give me that umbrella of yours!" He took it from her hand as he spoke. "This is the way," he said, leading her from the station. As they crossed the road, he took hold of her arm. "These streets are terribly dangerous," he said. "You never know what minute you're going to be run over!"
He still held her arm when they were safely on the pavement, but she contrived to free herself without making a point of doing so. He tried to bring her back to the mood in which they were when she leaned out of the window to listen to him ... "like Romeo and Juliet," he told himself ... but the congestion of the streets made such intimacies impossible. They were constantly being separated by the hurrying foot-passengers, and so they could only speak in short, dull sentences. He brought her at last to the quiet tea-shop where he ordered tea and home-made bread and honey!...
"Eleanor," he said, when the waitress had taken his order and had departed to fulfil it, "it's no good, you telling me that you can't go out with me. You must, my dear. I want to marry you!..."
"But it's absurd," she expostulated. "How can you possibly talk like that when we're such strangers to each other!"
"You're no stranger to me. I've loved you for two months now. I've hardly ever had you out of my mind. I was nearly demented mad when I lost you. I used to go and hang about that office of yours day after day in the hope that you'd come out!... And if ever I get the chance, I'll break that liftman's neck for him. He insulted me the day I asked him what office you were in. He called me a Nosey Parker!"
She laughed at him. "But that was right, wasn't it?" she said. "You wouldn't have him give information about me to any man who chooses to ask for it?"