To acquiesce would have been rude. He answered her with vague regrets. She interrupted him with a laugh in which was the faintest note of scorn.
“Oh, you’re very glad to get rid of me, and the stupid kissing and everything. You won’t have to give any one a Chinese kiss now. And they were very Chinese, you know.”
“An English kiss would have been out of the picture,” said Joyce.
“We’re not in the picture now,” she said softly.
Joyce felt that he was doing something very foolish, perhaps dangerous. He had never had the remotest fancy for allowing his companionship with her to degenerate into a flirtation. But what could he do? He bent down and kissed her.
There was an awkward silence for a few yards, which she broke at last in her irrelevant way.
“I should so like a glass of port wine tonight.”
“So should I,” said Joyce, cheerfully. “Or something like it. We ’ll go into the Crown yonder.”
Two or three times before they had had a glass together on their way home. To-night, therefore, the suggestion seemed natural. They entered the private bar of the public-house, and Joyce ordered the liquors. Only one young man was there, reading a sporting paper on a high stool. It was a quiet place, with the view beyond the counter down the bar cut off by a ground-glass screen, through a low space under which the customers were served.
Joyce pushed the port wine smilingly to Miss Stevens, and, with his back to the door, was pouring some water into his whisky, when a voice sounded in his ear, causing him to start violently and flood the counter.