They knew it already very well.  They drove there.  Tea was half a crown a head and one tipped well.  What matter?  There were soft music, soft lights, pretty women, attentive men.  Everyone looked rich, but perhaps everyone was not, any more than were Marie and Osborn.  Perhaps everyone was only spending his pockets empty.  The stage was well represented.  The place had a know-all air blended with a chaste exclusiveness.  It was a place where the best people were seen and others wanted and hoped to be seen.  Here sat Marie and Osborn, shaded by a great palm group, drinking the choicest blend of tea, eating vague fragments, and looking into each other’s eyes.  The worries of the morning slipped by; Marie forgot her tradesmen’s books, and Osborn the monotony of his daily toil.  Life was soft, gracious, easy and elegant.  They bought a piece of it, a crumbly piece, with five shillings before they went away.

“Taxi, sir?” asked the commissionaire.

“We’ll walk, thanks,” said Osborn.  Walking was a sort of recreation not too dowdy.  They went a little way on foot, then turned into a Tube station and travelled home.  When they wormed their way down a crowded tube train compartment to two seats they were faced with the everyday aspect of life again.  Tired people were going home; business men had not yet shaken off the pressure of their affairs; business women looked rather driven; here and there women with children worried themselves with their responsibilities.  One or two children were cross, and one or two babies cried.

More than one woman looked at Marie jealously.

They read the popular story; the new-married girl, careless in her health and beauty; untouched by time or trouble; the worshipful young man, whose fervour was unworn by toil or fret.  Every woman who looked at Marie and Osborn sitting side by side, with shoulders leaning slightly, unconsciously, towards each other, found in her heart some memory, or some empty ache for such fond glory.

The Kerrs alighted at Hampstead and walked briskly, Osborn’s hand tucked under Marie’s arm, for it was dark, up the road to the flats.  On their way they passed rows and tiers of flats, all similar, save that one represented more money, maybe, than another, all holding or remembering sweet stories like theirs.  But they did not think of that; they were in haste to reach No. 30 Welham Mansions, the little heaven behind the closed front door.

“We had a jolly old afternoon, hadn’t we?” said Osborn after dinner.  “I’ll take you there again.”

“Can we afford it?” said Marie, with a droop to her mouth.

“We will afford it.  I’ll make lots of money for my Marie.  We’ll have a dear old time!”

“I’ve been thinking, Osborn.”

“A wretched exercise,” he said gaily.  “Don’t you worry yourself, chicken.  Just be happy.  That’s all I ask.”  He grew the least degree pathetic.  “I can’t be here all day to look after you, and see that you’re happy; you’ll have to see to it yourself.  Do that for me, will you?  Make my girl awf’ly happy.”