He went through the passage into a little parlour.  The heavy-scented air of the place was at once soothing and exciting to his senses.

“Sit down, won’t you?  But what are you looking so serious about?  Has your girl thrown you over—­or what?”

“Now, how on earth did you guess that?” cried Olof in sudden relief, thankful that the girl was so bright and talkative.  He felt all at once that he too must talk—­of anything, nothing, or he could not stay in the place a minute.

“Guess?  Why, that’s easy enough.  They always come here when there’s anything wrong with—­the others.  And there’s always something wrong with some of them.  Was she pretty?” The girl looked at him with a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“Pretty?—­yes, that she was, pretty as you, nearly.”

“Puh!” laughed the girl.  “And she kissed you, I suppose?”

“No.  Wouldn’t even kiss me.”

“Aha.  So you made love to another girl, and then she threw you over—­that was it, I’m sure.”

“Right again!  Yes—­made love to another girl—­that was it.  And quite enough too.”

“Oh, it’s always the way with—­well, that sort of girls.  They don’t understand how to make love a bit.  There’s heaps of love to be had, if you only know where to look for it.”

They both laughed—­the girl in easy, teasing gaiety, Olof still thankful at finding it so easy to suit himself to his company.

“What’ll you have to drink?  Sherry, madeira, or stout, perhaps?  I like sherry best.”

“Let’s have all three!” cried Olof.

“That’ll be twenty, please.”  He gave her the money and she slipped from the room.

Olof looked round.  How was this going to end?  He was thankful at any rate that the room was neatly, almost tastefully furnished, and that the girl was so easy to talk to.

The bottles and glasses were brought in.  “Here’s to us both!” cried the girl, lifting her glass with an enticing glance.

They drank—­it was the first time Olof had ever tasted wine.  And all the bitterness and unrest in his soul seemed drowned at once.

“I say—­is this your first time?” The girl explained her question with a meaning glance.

“Yes.”  The word stuck in his throat.  “Have some more to drink,” he added hastily.

“That’s right!” The glasses rang.  “Got any cigarettes?”

Each lit a cigarette.  The girl leaned back in a careless posture, throwing one leg over the other, and watched the smoke curling up in the air.

“First-rate institution, isn’t it?” she said, with a laugh.  “Sort of public sanatorium—­though the fools of police or Government or whatever you call it won’t make it free.  All you men come here when you’re tired and worried and ill, and we cure you—­isn’t that it?”

“I dare say....”

“But it is, though, take my word for it.  How’d you ever get on without us, d’you think?  Like fish out of water!  And yet we’re reckoned as outcasts and all that.  Devil take all your society women, I say.  There’s one I see pass by every day, a judge’s wife, haughty and stuck up as a weathercock on a church spire.  Think she’d look at one of us?  But her husband, bless you, he....”