They drove swiftly through back-streets to the restaurant that Peter had selected, and stopped in a quiet, dark, narrow road off Greek Street.  Julie got out and looked around with pretended fear.  “Where in the world have you brought me?” she demanded.  “However did you find the place?  It’s worse than some of your favourite places in Havre.”

Inside, however, she looked round appreciatively.  “Really, Peter, it’s splendid,” she said under her breath—­“just the place,” and smiled sweetly on the padrone who came forward, bowing.  Peter had engaged a table, and they were led to it.

“I had almost given you up, sir,” said the man, “but by good fortune, some of our patrons are late too.”

They sat down opposite to each other, and studied the menu held out to them by a waiter.  “I don’t know the meaning of half the dishes,” laughed Julie.  “You order.  It’ll be more fun if I don’t know what’s coming.”

“We must drink Chianti,” said Peter, and ordered a bottle.  “You can think you are in Italy.”

Elbows on the table as she waited, Julie looked round.  In the far corner a gay party of four were halfway through dinner.  Two officers, an elderly lady and a young one, she found rather hard to place, but Julie decided the girl was the fiancee of one who had brought his friend to meet her.  At other tables were mostly couples, and across the room from her, with an elderly officer, sat a well-made-up woman, very plainly demimonde.  Immediately before her were four men, two of them foreigners, in morning dress, talking and eating hare.  It was evidently a professional party, and one of the four now and again hummed out a little air to the rest, and once jotted down some notes on the back of a programme.  They took no notice of anyone, but the eyes of the woman with the officer, who hardly spoke to her, searched Julie unblushingly.

Julie, gave a little sigh of happiness.  “This is lovely, Peter,” she said.  “We’ll be ages over dinner.  It’s such fun to be in nice clothes just for dinner sometimes and not to have to worry about the time, and going on elsewhere.  But I do wish my friends could see me, I must say.  They’d be horrified.  They thought I was going to a stodgy place in West Kensington.  I was must careful to be vague, but that was the idea.  Peter, how would you like to live in a suburb and have heaps of children, and dine out with city men and their wives once or twice a month for a treat?”

Peter grimaced.  Then he looked thoughtful.  “It wouldn’t have been any so remarkable for me at one time, Julie,” he said.

She shook her head.  “It would, my dear.  You’re not made for it.”

“What am I made for, then?”

She regarded him solemnly, and then relaxed into a smile.  “I haven’t a notion, but not that.  The thing is never to worry.  You get what you’re made for in the end, I think.”

“I wonder,” said Peter.  “Perhaps, but not always.  The world’s full of square pegs in round holes.”