“Queer idea, this, but the stuff tastes all right,” she acknowledged.  “I suppose, if you were taking your dear Miss Dalstan out, you’d go to a different sort of place, eh?”

“We generally go further up town,” he admitted unthinkingly.

She set her glass down quickly.

“So you do take her out, do you?” she asked coldly.  “You’d have been with her to-night, perhaps, if I hadn’t been here?”

“Very likely.”

She was half inclined to rally him, behind it all a little annoyed.

“You’re a nice sort of person!  Why, it’s only a few months ago since you pretended to be in love with me!”

He looked at her, and her eyes fell before his.

“I don’t think there was ever much question of our being in love with one another, was there?  We simply seemed to have drifted together because we were both miserable, and then, as the time passed on—­well, you came to be my only solace against the wretchedness of that life.”

She nodded appreciatively.  For a moment the sights and sounds of the noisy restaurant passed from her consciousness.

“Do you remember how glad I was to see you?  How we used to spend our holidays out in those dingy fields and hope and pray for better things some day?  But it was all so hopeless, wasn’t it!  You could barely keep yourself from starving, and I—­oh, the misery of that awful Detton Magna and teaching those wretched children!  There never were such children in the world.  I couldn’t get their mothers to send them clean.  They seemed to have inherited all the vice, the bad language, the ugly sordidness with which the place reeked.  They were old men and women in wickedness before they passed their first standard.  It’s a corner of the world I never want to see again.  I’d rather find hell!  Have you ordered any wine, Philip?  I want to forget.”

He pointed to the bottle which stood in the pail by their side, and summoned a waiter.  She watched it being opened and their glasses filled.

“This is like one of our fairy stories of the old days, isn’t it?” she said.  “Well, I drink to you, Philip.  Here’s success to our new lives!”

She raised her glass and drained it.  A woman had entered who reminded him of Elizabeth, and his eyes had wandered away for a moment as Beatrice pledged him.  She called him back a little impatiently.

“Don’t sit there as though you were looking at ghosts, Philip!  Try and remember who I am and what we used to mean to one another.  Let us try and believe,” she added, a little wistfully, “that one of those dreams of ours which we used to set floating like bubbles, has come true.  We can wipe out all the memories we don’t want.  That ought to be easy.”

“Ought it?” he answered grimly.  “There are times when I’ve found it difficult enough.”

She laughed and looked about her.  He realised suddenly that she was still very attractive with her rather insolent mouth, her clear eyes, her silky hair with the little fringe.  People, as they passed, paid her some attention, and she was frankly curious about everybody.