Nor did he appear at all for tea, though she waited in the room an hour and a half. Nor did he appear anywhere during the evening.

On Monday evening, returning from her work, she again imagined she would see him, if not by himself, at any rate in the dining-room with his friend. But she was again disappointed. On Tuesday she heard accidentally, through Mrs. Payne, that he and his friend had three days’ leave which they were spending in London.

She did not see or hear from him again until Thursday evening. Then, as she was dressing for dinner in her room, Sheila came rushing up the stairs to announce that she was wanted on the telephone. The telephone being in Mrs. Payne’s private room on the ground floor, this was a boarding-house sensation. The residents of the Rosamund Tea Rooms were not telephone-using animals. Mrs. Payne was in the room, and did not see any reason to leave it.

He asked her how she was, and said that he had been in London for three days and that he was now at the River Sun. She was to come round at once to have a drink. She explained that she was just about to have dinner, and he said she needn’t bother about dinner, there was plenty of that round where he was. He sounded in extremely high spirits, and if only in order to cut the conversation short, she agreed to do as he said. She rang off, and thanked Mrs. Payne for the use of the telephone. Mrs. Payne replied affably, but not ostentatiously so. Miss Roach had a remarkable feeling that Mrs. Payne was the headmistress of an academy from which, if she went on like this, she was likely to be expelled at an early date.

She did not know exactly how much Mrs. Payne had heard, and she did not have the courage to tell her she would not be in to dinner. Instead, as she went out, she caught Sheila in the dining-room, and quietly broke the news to her.

She was a little dubious as to the condition she was going to find him in, and was relieved to see that his high spirits seemed to be due to nothing in addition to high spirits. A small gin and french was awaiting her on the table in their corner of the Lounge, along with his large whisky and soda, and they began at once busily and cheerfully to talk. He described his trip to London, and had many questions to ask about the town, questions which she was able to answer with the same modest Londoner’s pride as he had evoked in her the first evening they had met.

They were in the dining-room by half-past eight, and had finished eating by nine.

After dinner he did not seem to want to go on drinking, but suggested that they should take a walk along the river. It was a mild night, and not so completely black as usual because of a little diffused light from an invisible moon. It was still very black, however. She suggested that they should cross the bridge and walk along on the far side of the river, but it seemed that he preferred to walk through the little Thames Lockdon park on the near side. The thought flitted across her mind that on this near side there were seats upon which one could sit in comfort and look at the river: on the far side there was nothing of this kind. It also flitted across her mind that the same thought had flitted across his. She rebuked her mind for these hyper-imaginative flittings.

They walked slowly for twenty minutes in the darkness by the side of the river, and then turned round and walked back. On again reaching the little park he suggested that they should sit down on one of the seats.