“What are you to do?  Don’t ask me, sir.  My wife is very ill indeed, and you come down the Grove making noise enough to wake the dead”—­he indicated the motor-bicycle, of which the silencer was admittedly defective—­“and you want to see my daughter.  My daughter has more important work to do than to see you.  I never heard of such callousness.  If you want to communicate with my daughter you had better write—­so long as she stays in this house.”

Mr. Haim shut the door, which rendered his advantage over George complete.

From the post office nearly opposite the end of the Grove George dispatched a reply-paid telegram to Marguerite: 

“Where and when can I see you?—­GEORGE.  Russell Square.”

It seemed a feeble retort to Mr. Haim, but he could think of nothing better.

On the way up town he suddenly felt, not hungry, but empty, and he called in at a tea-shop.  He was the only customer, in a great expanse of marble-topped tables.  He sat down at a marble-topped table.  On the marble-topped table next to him were twenty-four sugar-basins, and on the next to that a large number of brass bells, and on another one an infinity of cruets.  A very slatternly woman was washing the linoleum in a corner of the floor.  Two thin, wrinkled girls in shabby black were whispering together behind the counter.  The cash-den was empty.  Through the open door he could keep an eye on his motor-bicycle, which was being surreptitiously regarded by a boy theoretically engaged in cleaning the window.  A big van drove up, and a man entered with pastry on a wooden tray and bantered one of the girls in black.  She made no reply, being preoccupied with the responsibility of counting cakes.  The man departed and the van disappeared.  Nobody took the least notice of George.  He might have been a customer invisible and inaudible.  After the fiasco of his interview with Mr. Haim, he had not the courage to protest.  He framed withering sentences to the girls in black, such as:  “Is this place supposed to be open for business, or isn’t it?” but they were not uttered.  Then a girl in black with a plain, ugly white apron and a dowdy white cap appeared on the stairs leading from the basement, and removed for her passage a bar of stained wood lettered in gilt:  ‘Closed,’ and she halted at George’s table.  She spoke no word.  She just stood over him, unsmiling, placid, flaccid, immensely indifferent.  She was pale, a poor sort of a girl, without vigour.  But she had a decent, honest face.  She was not aware that she ought to be bright, welcoming, provocative, for a penny farthing an hour.  She had never heard of Hebe.  George thought of the long, desolating day that lay before her.  He looked at her seriously.  His eyes did not challenge hers as they were accustomed to challenge Hebe’s.  He said in a friendly, matter-of-fact tone: 

“A meat-pie, please, and a large coffee.”

And she repeated in a thin voice: