The slight moodiness of his expression set her suggesting confidences.  “You’ve got a pretty bad hump,” she said caressingly.  “What is it?  Has the car slumped?  Won’t they have it?  Or is it indigestion?  You’re not what you were when—­”

She gave a quick sigh and smile, very inviting.

“When we were touring about Canada and the States together,” he finished.  “Well, you see; when a man has come back to all he left behind him—­”

“Did you leave much behind you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You never told me anything,” she pouted.  “But I’m not asking.  I’ve no curiosity.  The knots men tie themselves into—­”

“You can laugh.”

“You make me.  Aren’t men silly?  Tell me about—­to whom you came back.”

“What does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. I don’t care.”  She drummed her fingers on the table.  “All men are like cats, home by day, and tiles by night.  But if you’d told me you were likely to get scolded for saying how d’you do to me, I’d have been more careful of you.”

Her smile derided him.  “Has someone scolded you?” she asked.

Consomme was set before them and she began to drink it with appetite, not repeating her question till it was finished.

“Well?” she said then, tilting her head inquiringly to one side.

“The fact is,” he answered abruptly, “I—­I’ve had a bad let-down.”

“Financial?”

“No.”

“Oh!  Really!” she said pettishly.

“It doesn’t matter,” he remarked, rousing himself, “the thing is to make the best of life, and by Jove!  I’m going to!”

“So you come and look for me?”

“Precisely,” said Osborn.  “You’ve been awf’ly decent to me, Roselle.  Knowing you has meant a lot to me.  I don’t believe you’d let a fellow down very badly, would you?” He began to feel tender towards her, and the stupidity and avarice, which he had awhile ago begun faintly to see in her, now receded under the spell of the lights and the hour.  “If no one else has cut in since I last saw you,” he said, leaning towards her, “you might be kind to me again.  Will you?  I’m lonely.  I’m simply too dreadfully lonely for anything.  What are you doing this week-end?”

“Nothing,” she said after a careful pause.

“Come out into the country on Saturday.”

“I’ve a matinee.”

“Of course.  Sunday then?  I’d bring the car round for you early, and we’d have a jolly day, get down to the sea somewhere.  You’d like Brighton?”

“That’s a nice run,” she agreed.  “Yes!”

“We could get back for dinner.  Where shall we dine—­Pagani’s?”

She suggested, also, a supper club to which she belonged.  “You’ll have to belong, too,” she said with enthusiasm.  “It’s the brightest thing in town.  Will you, if I get someone to propose you?”

“Rather!”

He had felt dreadfully at a loose end before that evening, but now, this old intimacy again established, he was, in a restless sort of way, happier.  As they drove home, she slid her hand into his pocket like a cunning child and said:  “Osborn, I want a fiver awf’ly badly; lend me one.”  And it was pleasure to him to pull out a handful of money and let her pick out the gold.