“Two pounds!” she exclaimed.  “What are you thinking of?  We can only sell a quarter.”

“Only a quarter!” said Peter.  “That’s no good.  Come on, make up the two pounds.”

“If my boss comes in or finds out I’ll be fired,” said the girl; “can’t be done.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter,” said Peter innocently, “You’ll easily get a job—­something better and easier, I expect.”

“It’s easy enough, perhaps,” said the girl, “but you never can tell. And it’s dangerous, and uncertain.”

Peter stared at her.  When he bought chocolates as a parson, he never had talks like this.  He wondered if London had changed since he knew it.  Then he played up:  “You’re pretty enough to knock that last out, anyway?” he said.

“Am I?” she demanded.  “Do you mean you’d like to keep me?”

“I’ve got one week-end left of leave,” said Peter.  “What about the chocolates?”

“Poor boy!” she said.  “Well, I’ll risk it.”  And she made up the two pounds.

He wandered into a tobacconist’s, and bought cigarettes which Julie’s soul loved, and then he made for a theatre booking-office.

Outside and his business done, he looked at his watch, and found he had a bit of time to spare.  He walked down Shaftesbury Avenue, and thought he would get himself spruced up at a hairdresser’s.  He saw a little place with a foreigner at the door, and he went in.  It was a tiny room with three seats all empty.  The man seated him in one and began.

Peter discovered that his hair needed this and that, and being in a good temper and an idle mood acquiesced.  Presently a girl came in.  Peter smelt her enter, and then saw her in the glass.  She was short and dark and foreign, too, and she wore a blouse that appeared to have remarkably little beneath it, and to be about to slip off her shoulders.  She came forward and stood between him and the glass, smiling.  “Wouldn’t you like your nails manicured?” she demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Peter; “I had not meant to ...” and was lost.

“Second thoughts are best,” she said; “but let me look at your hands.  Oh, I should think you did need it!  Whatever will your girl say to you to-night if you have hands like this?”

Peter, humiliated, looked at his hands.  They did not appear to him to differ much from the hands Julie and others had seen without visible consternation before, but he had no time to say so.  The young lady was now seated by his side with a basin of hot water, and was dabbling his hand in it.  “Nice?  Not too hot?” she inquired brightly.