"All the restaurants are so crowded nowadays," said Eric.
"But if you telephone for a table——"
He was grown too fond of Barbara to provide people like Lady Maitland with an excuse for saying that he was compromising her; and he was not going to pave the way for an unpleasant altercation with Lord Crawleigh (when he would have nothing to say for himself).
"I'll dine with you, if you like," he suggested.
5
On the morning of the day when "The Bomb-Shell" was to be produced, Eric found his diary overflowing into a new volume. Before snapping the lock for the last time and burying the book in the little steel safe which he had had built behind one of the panels in the dining-room, he turned the pages for ten months, starting with the first night of his first play and ending with the dress rehearsal of the second. The ten months' record was so engrossing that he lay in bed, smoking and reading, instead of ringing for his secretary. One day he had been an unknown journalist; the next—in a phrase of which he could never tire—he awoke to find himself famous. Half-forgotten acquaintances who had sent him cards for dances now invited him to dinners at which he was courted and instantly handed on. At first he had written down, with more pleasure than cynicism, the complimentary phrases which had tickled his vanity; that had soon palled, and the compliments were monotonously framed; after two months he only recorded such triumphs as when old Farquaharson invited him to call. "I would give much to have written your play; I would have given anything to write it at your age." Some day, when Barbara was in a disparaging mood, he would shew her that jealously guarded letter.
An idle whim sent his fingers searching for the Poynter dinner where he had first met her. Since that night her influence, suspected but never established, had caused "Dined with Lady Poynter" to be a frequent entry. Every Thursday he went to Berkeley Square, every Friday Barbara lunched with him in Ryder Street—after sweeping aside his scruples by appealing in his presence to her mother for leave to come to his flat unchaperoned. And for an appreciable part of each week Barbara devoted herself to arranging further meetings in the houses of their friends.
"Took Lady B. home late and circuitously."
Eric was mildly surprised to find how lately their tropical intimacy had begun. Two months.… And no one—in court or outside—would believe the truth.… "Dined with B. in her boudoir, the house being in curl-papers. She unwontedly communicative, but tired and in need of rest." The discreet phrasing gave him all the reminder that he wanted to construct again the night when she had told him about Jack Waring—she had indeed been communicative——; and any one who broke down as she had done presumably stood in need of rest.…
On that night she had turned herself from an adventure into a habit; in place of sentimental tilting there had been born a love without passion.…