She had other people with her, but he saw her first.  He could not have mistaken her.  Of course, she had changed.  She was taller, for one thing, and wore evening dress instead of the plain brown frock that he remembered.  But her thick hair had always been short, and now it was done up it did not seem much shorter.  And it still had that quaint air of being brushed up from her head by a secret, rushing wind—­of wanting to fly away with her.  She was burnt, too, with an alien sun and wind.  Her face and neck were a golden brown, and in reckless contrast with her white shoulders.  One saw how little she cared.  She sat with her elbows on the table, and the sight of the supple hands and strong, slender wrists stopped Robert Stonehouse short, as though a deep, old wound which had not troubled him for years had suddenly begun to hurt again.  And yet how happy he had been, as a little boy, when she had just touched him.

It was evidently a celebration in her honour.  A tall young man with side whiskers who came in late presented her with a bunch of roses in the name of the whole company and with a gay, exaggerated homage.  They were a jolly crowd.  They had in common their youth and an appearance of good-natured disregard for the things that ordinary people cared about.  Otherwise they were of all sorts and conditions, like their clothes.  Two or three were in evening dress, and one girl who sat at the end of the table and smoked incessantly wore a shabby coat and skirt and a raffish billycock hat.  Chelsea or the University Schools was stamped on all of them.  There wasn’t much that they didn’t know, and there was very little that they believed in—­not even themselves.  For they were of the very newest type, and would have scorned to admit to a Purpose or a Faith.  But they could not help being young and rather liking one another, and the good food and the promise of a riotous evening.

Robert knew their kind.  He even knew by sight the side-whiskered young man who now clapped his hands like an Eastern potentate.  He had been of Robert’s year at the University, and had been ploughed twice.

“Wine-ho!  Fellow creatures, what is it to be?  In honour of the occasion and to show our contempt of circumstances, shall we say a magnum of Heidsieck?  All in favour wave their paws——­”

The girl in the billycock hat blew a great puff of smoke towards him.

“Oh, death and damnation, Howard!  Haven’t I been explaining to you all the afternoon that I owe rent for a fortnight to a devil in female form, and that unless someone buys ’A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside Down,’ Gerty will be on the streets?  Make it beer with a dash o’ bitters.”

Finally it was Francey who decided.  She beckoned, not looking at him, and Robert with a little obsequious bow, handed her the wine card and waited at her elbow.  He was not afraid of Howard’s recognition.  They had never spoken to one another, and in any case Howard would not believe his eyes.