“No, I shan’t.”

An office-boy staggered in with tea, and for a while the business of it kept them lightly occupied, and talking inconsequently; but presently Rokeby went back to: 

“So you are going to see Miss Winter this evening?  Look here, Mrs. Kerr, Osborn would never forgive me if I let you go alone.  I’ll take you—­yes, please.  Do let me!  We’ll both give her a surprise.”

Recovering a spark of the old audacity which her prettiness used to justify, she laughed:  “No, you won’t.  We shall want to talk—­and talk.  You’d be in the way.”

“I solemnly swear I won’t.  I’ll wash up and do a lot of the jobs bachelor girls always keep for their men friends to do.  I’ll sit and smoke in the kitchen.  Honest, I will!  There, now?”

Her laughter was real and merry. “You?  What’s come to you?”

“I hardly know,” said Rokeby quickly, in a low voice.

Marie’s hand and eyes were hovering critically over the dish of cakes; youth and delicious silliness had visited her, if but for an hour, and a curious kind of champagne happiness fizzed through her.  The earnestness of Desmond’s sudden look passed her by; at the moment there was nothing earnest in her; she was, all so suddenly, a holiday woman out for the day.  Selecting her cake, she began to eat it.

“It will be awf’ly good of you to take me there,” she answered; “it will be something to write and tell Osborn about.”

“Do wives have to hunt for topics for letters, as they have to hunt for suitable conversation, when husbands want it?”

“Oh! have you noticed that?”

“I’ve noticed my married friends seem to have very little of interest to say to each other.”

“Why is it?”

“I don’t know.  I think they give each other all they’ve got in a great big lump too soon.  But I don’t know; how should I?”

“I wonder if I could tell you. I think it’s because a man carefully robs a woman of all power to have any interest outside her home; but at the same time he votes her home interests too dull to talk about.”

“Married life!” said Rokeby quizzically.

“But there are beautiful things in it; children, you know.  I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

They let a silence elapse as if to swallow up the memory of the things Marie shouldn’t have said, and after it he asked:  “What time shall we go?”

At six o’clock they were speeding down Cannon Street, along the Strand, and the gaudier thoroughfares of the West, in a taxicab, to Julia’s flat.

Her delight at seeing Marie was obvious, but a veil of reserve seemed to drop over her vivid, strong face when she saw who escorted her.

Rokeby would not take leave of Marie on the threshold, though; he followed her in and sat down, asking if he might stay.  There was about him an air of smiling determination, and his eyes obstinately sought Julia’s, which as obstinately avoided his.  She began to chatter, as if to slur over a momentary confusion.