We had reached the steps of the County Club, and I told George to come in and have some dinner with me. Both of us were already engaged in different parts of London, but we wanted to hold together.
"Come to Hale's," he said, shaking his head. "It's pretty well deserted since the war; everybody's fighting. I can't risk meeting a crowd of people I know and having to pretend nothing's up."
Leaving St. James' Square, we walked through King Street and entered the squat Regency house which had sheltered succeeding generations of London's exquisites for a hundred years. The coffee-room was deserted, and we had a choice of wine, food and service; but I have never eaten a gloomier meal. Every few minutes George would say, "Look here, you know, something's got to be done about this!" and I would reply, "Nothing can be done." Then we would attack a new course. Though we had chosen Hale's to be secure from interruption, I am not sure that we were not both a little relieved at the end of dinner when Vincent Grayle limped in with an evening paper under his arm and asked leave to join us for the short remainder of our meal. I can get on with him at a pinch; George cannot; but we shared a common need for diversion.
"I've just this moment got back from France," Grayle said to explain his late arrival. "I've been having a lively week at G.H.Q., watching the professional soldiers losing the war for us." He summoned a waiter and truculently ordered dinner. "Anything happening in London?" he asked.
"Nothing much," I told him. "What news from the Front?"
"Everybody's very cheery, getting ready for the big push. They all seem quite sure that they're going to break through this time, and there's an amount of ammunition and reserves that really does put you in good heart when you think how the men out there were starving in the first part of the war—thanks to the gang we had running things on this side. Whether we've got the generals is another question; if not, we must make a remarkably big clean sweep, politicians included."
He was evidently preparing one of his usual attacks, and, though I had welcomed the momentary diversion, neither George nor I wanted a political argument at such a time. With a trumped-up apology we went into the morning-room for coffee and liqueurs, leaving Grayle to his opinions and his evening paper.
"We don't seem to have thought out anything very helpful," sighed George, as he threw himself into a chair. "D'you think it's the least good going round to Beresford's place and forcing Sonia to go back?"
"Do you want her to go back, even if you can make her?" I asked once more. "She's been saying for weeks that she regarded her marriage as at an end; now she's proved it. Do you want to send her back on those terms? And does O'Rane want to have her back?"
George covered his face with his hands, shaking his head despairingly from side to side.