“No.  I do.  If you go to a restaurant you get it different.  You get more of it, too.  Well, what with one thing and another I’ve got very fed up with Madame Bucks.  It’s all dirty and half baked.  There’s great holes in the carpet of my sitting-room—­holes you could put your foot through.  And I’ve done that, as a matter of fact.  Put my foot through and nearly gone over. Should have done, only for the table.  Well, I mean to say ... you can’t help being fed up with it.  But she knows where I work, and I know she’s hard up; so I don’t like to go anywhere else, because if anybody asked me if he should go there, I couldn’t honestly recommend him to; and yet, you see how it is, I shouldn’t like to leave her in the lurch, if she knew I was just gone somewhere else down the street.”

“No,” sympathetically agreed Emmy.  “I quite see.  It’s very awkward for you.  Though it’s no use being too kind-hearted with these people; because they don’t appreciate it; and if you don’t say anything they just go on in the same way, never troubling themselves about you.  They think, as long as you don’t say anything you’re all right; and it’s not their place to make any alteration.  They’re quite satisfied.  Look at Jenny and me.”

“Is she satisfied!” asked Alf.

“With herself, she is.  She’s never satisfied with me.  She never tries to see it from my point of view.”

“No,” Alf nodded his head wisely.  “That’s what it is.  They don’t.”  He nodded again.

“Isn’t it a lovely night,” ventured Emmy.  “See the moon over there.”

They looked up at the moon and the stars and the unfathomable sky.  It took them at once away from the streets and the subject of their talk.  Both sighed as they stared upwards, lost in the beauty before them.  And when at last their eyes dropped, the street lamps had become so yellow and tawdry that they were like stupid spangles in contrast with the stars.  Alf still held Emmy’s arm so snugly within his own, and her wrist was within the clasp of his fingers.  It was so little a thing to slide his fingers into a firm clasp of her hand, and they drew closer.

“Lovely, eh!” Alf ejaculated, with a further upward lift of his eyes.  Emmy sighed again.

“Not like down here,” she soberly said.

“No, it’s different.  Down here’s all right, though,” Alf assured her.  “Don’t you think it is?” He gave a rather nervous little half laugh.  “Don’t you think it is?”

“Grand!” Emmy agreed, with the slightest hint of dryness.

“I say, it was awfully good of you to come to-night,” said Alf.  “I’ve ... you’ve enjoyed it, haven’t you?” He was looking sharply at her, and Emmy’s face was illumined.  He saw her soft cheeks, her thin, soft little neck; he felt her warm gloved hand within his own.  “D’you mind?” he asked, and bent abruptly so that their faces were close together.  For a moment, feeling so daring that his breath caught, Alf could not carry out his threat.  Then, roughly, he pushed his face against hers, kissing her.  Quickly he released Emmy’s arm, so that his own might be more protectingly employed; and they stood embraced in the moonlight.