“How severe you are in your articles.  You are gentler in your music, more like yourself; but I see your servant does not waste her time dusting your books ...and that is your bedroom, may I see it?”

He looked at her abashed.  “I am afraid my room will seem to you very unluxurious.  I have read of prima donnas’ bed-rooms.”

But the bare simplicity of the room did not displease her; it seemed to her more natural to sleep in a low, narrow bed like his, than in fine linen and eiderdown quilts, and she liked the scant, bleak furniture, the two chairs, the iron wash-hand stand, and the window curtained with a bit of Indian muslin.  They stood talking, hardly knowing what they were saying.  Her eyes embarrassed him, and she stopped in the middle of a sentence.

“Now, Ulick,” she said, turning towards the door, “I want you to take me to lunch.  We’ll go to the Savoy.”

He had to admit he had not sufficient money.  Three shillings and sixpence were what remained until he received the cheque from one of his newspapers.

“But I am not going to have you pay for my lunch, Ulick.  I am asking you.  Be nice, don’t refuse; what does it matter?  What does money matter to me?  It comes in so fast that I don’t know what to do with it.”

It was at the end of the season, and there were not many people in the low-ceilinged dining-room.  All the waiters knew Evelyn, and she was conducted ceremoniously to a table.  And as she passed up the room, she wondered what was being thought of Ulick.  He was so different from the exquisite, foppish elegance of the man she was usually seen with.  He was strange-looking, but Ulick was as distinguished as Owen, only the distinction was of another kind.

He always remembered how at the end of lunch she took out her gold knitted purse, and emptied its contents on the tablecloth.  And he was astonished at the casualness with which she spent money in every shop that caught her fancy.  The afternoon included a visit to the saddler’s, where she had to make inquiries about bits and bridles.  She called at two jewellers, where she had left things to be mended.  She ordered a dozen pair of boots, and purchased a large quantity of stationery after a long discussion about dies, stamps and monograms.  And when all this was finished, she proposed they should have tea in Kensington Gardens.

Ulick knew very little of London.  He knew Victoria Station, for he took the train there to Dulwich; the Strand, for he went there to see editors; and Bloomsbury, because he lived there.  But he had never been to the park, and seemed puzzled when Evelyn spoke of the Serpentine and the round pond.  It was surprising, he said, to find forest groves in the heart of London.  They had tea at a little table set beneath huge branches, and after tea they sat on a sloping lawn facing the long water.  She wondered if he were aware of the beauty of things, the wonder of life, the blue