Stella laughed. “But I want everybody always,” she said disingenuously.
It had been arranged that while Sir Oliver should go to his longed-for and seldom-used club, and Lady Blount visit certain cronies, Herold should take Stella to the Zoological Gardens.
She turned to John.
“Are you quite sure you can't come too, dear?”
He shook his head. “A newspaper office is a remorseless machine—just like a theatre. I must work.”
“I'm beginning to be frightfully jealous of work,” she said, with a laugh.
“It 's the noblest thing a man can do,” said Sir Oliver.
At the zoo, Stella found a world of wonder, which drove disappointment from her mind, and in her childlike gaiety and enthusiasm Herold forgot his heartache for a while. Sufficient for the moment was the joy of her exquisite presence, of her animated cheeks and dancing eyes, of her beautiful voice rippling into exclamations of rapture at monkey or secretary-bird or hippopotamus.
“These are springbok,” said Herold, in front of an inclosure.
Stella's brows knitted themselves into their customary network of perplexity.