And next he was outside in the dark with Marguerite Haim, and new, intensified sensations thrilled him. She was very marvellous in the dark.
Mr. Haim had not returned.
“Well!” she muttered; and then dreamily: “What a funny little man Mr. Prince is, isn’t he?” She spoke condescendingly.
“Anyhow,” said George, who had been respecting Mr. Alfred Prince, “anyhow, I’m glad you didn’t go to the concert with him.”
“Why?” she asked, with apparent simplicity. “I adore the Proms. Don’t you?”
“Let’s go, then,” he suggested. “We shan’t be very late, and what else is there for you to do?”
His audacity frightened him. There she stood with him in the porch, silent, reflective. She would never go. For sundry practical and other reasons she would refuse. She must refuse.
“I’ll go,” she said, as if announcing a well-meditated decision. He could scarcely believe it. This could not be London that he was in.
They deposited the portfolio under the mat in the porch.
IV
When they got into the hall the band was sending forth a tremendous volume of brilliant exhilarating sound. A vast melody seemed to ride on waves of brass. The conductor was very excited, and his dark locks shook with the violence of his gestures as he urged onward the fingers and arms of the executants flying madly through the maze of the music to a climax. There were flags; there was a bank of flowers; there was a fountain; there were the huge crimson-domed lamps that poured down their radiance; and there was the packed crowd of straw-hatted and floral-hatted erect figures gazing with upturned, intent faces at the immense orchestral machine. Then came a final crash, and for an instant the thin, silvery tinkle of the fountain supervened in an enchanted hush; and then terrific applause, with yells and thuds above