“Absurd!” he protested—­he could not bear the thought of her not dining with him.  He knew too well the desolation of a solitary dinner.  “Absurd!  We go in a taxi.  The restaurant is warm.  We return in a taxi.”

“To please thee, then.”

“What is that form?”

“It is for the telephone.  Thou understandest how it is necessary that I have the telephone—­me!  But I comprehend nothing of this form.”

She passed him the form.  She had written her name in the space allotted.  “Christine Dubois.”  A fair calligraphy!  But what a name!  The French equivalent of “Smith”.  Nothing could be less distinguished.  Suddenly it occurred to him that Concepcion’s name also was Smith.

“I will fill it up for you.  It is quite simple.”

“It is possible that it is simple when one is English.  But English—­that is as if to say Chinese.  Everything contrary.  Here is a pen.”

“No.  I have my fountain-pen.”  He hated a cheap pen, and still more a penny bottle of ink, but somehow this particular penny bottle of ink seemed touching in its simple ugliness.  She was eminently teachable.  He would teach her his own attitude towards penny bottles of ink....  Of course she would need the telephone—­that could not be denied.

As Christine was signing the form Marthe entered with the chrysanthemums, which he had handed over to her; she had arranged them in a horrible blue glass vase cheaply gilded; and while Marthe was putting the vase on the small table there was a ring at the outer door.  Marthe hurried off.

Christine said, kissing him again tenderly: 

“Thou art a squanderer!  Fine for me to tell thee not to buy costly flowers!  Thou has spent at least ten shillings for these.  With ten shillings—­”

“No, no!” he interrupted her.  “Five.”  It was a fib.  He had paid half a guinea for the few flowers, but he could not confess it.

They could hear a powerful voice indistinctly booming at the top of the stairs.  “Two callers on one afternoon!” G.J. reflected.  And yet she had told him she went out for the first time only the day before yesterday!  He scarcely liked it, but his reason rescued him from the puerility of a grievance against her on this account.  “And why not?  She is bound to be a marked success.”

Marthe returned to the drawing-room and shut the door.

“Madame—­” she began, slightly agitated.

“Speak, then!” Christine urged, catching her agitation.

“It is the police!”

G.J. had a shock.  He knew many of the policemen who lurked in the dark doorways of Piccadilly at night, had little friendly talks with them, held them for excellent fellows.  But a policeman invading the flat of a courtesan, and himself in the flat, seemed a different being from the honest stalwarts who threw the beams of lanterns on the key-holes of jewellers’ shops.

Christine steeled herself to meet the crisis with self-reliance.  She pointedly did not appeal to the male.