"Oh, there are better things than the opera, my dear," he said, with a laugh. "The opera's dull and stupid compared to other things you shall see. But here we are at my restaurant; and here you shall taste the first of your new joys. Wait till he pulls the glass up."
It was extraordinary how well Charlie seemed to be known. A smiling man, with a stiff hand to the peak of his cap, held open the door for them; another smiling man, rotund of body, was discovered bowing within the doors, and preceded them to a table in a corner; hoped that the gentleman was well, and issued sharp orders in a foreign tongue to the flying waiters. Charlie took it all as a mere matter of course; had a word or two to say about the menu, and the changing of a particular dish; and then sank down at the other side of the table. Truly a new experience to look into the dark eyes of this girl, and to see how she sat in this very ordinary restaurant with her lips parted, looking about her, and enjoying every moment of the time, even while she waited for dinner. And she was such a striking looking girl, too, he thought critically, with that black hair and those dark eyes set in her white face. No one need quarrel with him for bringing out such a girl as this; there was something attractive, in a fashion, about her very shabbiness; it gave an air to her.
She ate sparingly; there was so much to be seen—so much to which to listen. People coming and going—hurrying or taking this matter of dining easily; and beyond the doors the brightly lighted street, and all the hum and noise of a London that was making night holiday. And opposite her—here familiarly, with his eyes smiling into hers—Charlie of the pleasant smile and the pleasant voice; Charlie who had known her in the old days that his very presence recalled with a pang, and yet with a dear remembrance.
It is probable that had it been anyone else out of that old familiar life—anyone else as joyous and as glad to meet her—it would have been the same; he would have been as certain of a welcome. But it happened that Charlie was the first; and Charlie had that exquisite quality—exquisite for that time at least—that he knew how to laugh, and had found a trick of being light-hearted. The world and all it held was as much a great game to him as she had once believed it might be for her; gladly and eagerly, like a child who is taught some pleasant lesson that has less of task than of sport about it, she listened to him, and was glad to learn anything he could teach her.
He whispered whimsical surmises as to the characters of the people at the adjoining tables; set her bubbling with laughter at a humorous suggestion as to what would happen if anyone there should feel compelled to rise and give an account of himself or herself.
"You would have to confess that you had never been in a restaurant before," he whispered across the table. "How they'd stare at you!"
"So that you don't laugh at me, I don't mind," she replied. "I think I could sit here for ever—just looking at the people—and wondering about them; I don't want it ever to leave off."
He asked her if he might smoke; she nodded gravely, and smiled. He might have been surprised had he known what the savour of the smoke in her nostrils meant to her; how it breathed in a vague way of Old Paul and his pipe on far-off evenings, and of a thousand things for which she had longed. Then at last the time came for him to pay the reckoning, and for them both to go. She rose with something of a sigh; but all was not over yet.
As they came out of the place, he took her by the elbow and turned her sharply off down the street; dodged with her carefully and yet laughingly through a press of traffic; and stopped with her before the doors of a brilliantly lighted building, outside which hung posters and photographs of all shapes and sizes and sorts. Before she had time to utter a word he had hurried her inside, and had stopped at a little ticket office, from out of which a man looked at him; then had put down money, and had taken up two printed slips. Only then, when he stood before her looking at the numbers on the slips, did she venture a remonstrance.
"What place is this? You know I ought—I really ought to be going home."