“No,” he said.  “I’ve finished there.  They’ve dismissed me.”

“Who have?”

“The relatives.”

“Why?”

He shook his head.

“I hope you made them pay you your month,” said she firmly.

He was glad to be able to give a satisfactory answer.

After a pause she resumed bravely: 

“So Mr. Farll was one of these artists?  At least so I see according to the paper.”

He nodded.

“It’s a very funny business,” she said.  “But I suppose there’s some of them make quite a nice income out of it. You ought to know about that, being in it, as it were.”

Never in his life had he conversed on such terms with such a person as Mrs. Alice Challice.  She was in every way a novelty for him—­in clothes, manners, accent, deportment, outlook on the world and on paint.  He had heard and read of such beings as Mrs. Alice Challice, and now he was in direct contact with one of them.  The whole affair struck him as excessively odd, as a mad escapade on his part.  Wisdom in him deemed it ridiculous to prolong the encounter, but shy folly could not break loose.  Moreover she possessed the charm of her novelty; and there was that in her which challenged the male in him.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose we can’t stand here for ever!”

The crowd had frittered itself away, and an attendant was closing and locking the doors of St. George’s Hall.  He coughed.

“It’s a pity it’s Saturday and all the shops closed.  But anyhow suppose we walk along Oxford Street all the same?  Shall we?” This from her.

“By all means.”

“Now there’s one thing I should like to say,” she murmured with a calm smile as they moved off.  “You’ve no occasion to be shy with me.  There’s no call for it.  I’m just as you see me.”

“Shy!” he exclaimed, genuinely surprised.  “Do I seem shy to you?” He thought he had been magnificently doggish.

“Oh, well,” she said.  “That’s all right, then, if you aren’t. I should take it as a poor compliment, being shy with me.  Where do you think we can have a good talk?  I’m free for the evening.  I don’t know about you.”

Her eyes questioned his.

No Gratuities

At a late hour, they were entering, side by side, a glittering establishment whose interior seemed to be walled chiefly in bevelled glass, so that everywhere the curious observer saw himself and twisted fractions of himself.  The glass was relieved at frequent intervals by elaborate enamelled signs which repeated, ‘No gratuities.’  It seemed that the directors of the establishment wished to make perfectly clear to visitors that, whatever else they might find, they must on no account expect gratuities.

“I’ve always wanted to come here,” said Mrs. Alice Challice vivaciously, glancing up at Priam Farll’s modest, middle-aged face.

Then, after they had successfully passed through a preliminary pair of bevelled portals, a huge man dressed like a policeman, and achieving a very successful imitation of a policeman, stretched out his hand, and stopped them.