He mentioned the restaurant in Soho.  She shook her head definitely.

“Not there?”

“No, anywhere but there.  I don’t—­” she hesitated.

“You don’t care for the place?”

“Oh yes, I do.  But—­”

“Well, then—­” He mentioned another and she agreed to anything rather than that which held so many happy associations.

When they were seated at their table, he leant back in his chair and looked at her pleasurably.

“You know, it’s mighty good of you,” he said, “to keep me company like this.”

She was too impervious to outer sensation then to find repugnance at the tone of his voice; at another time she might have resented it.  Now, scarcely the sense of the words reached her.

“Which would you prefer, a theatre or a music hall afterwards?”

“Whichever you like.”

“Oh, we’ll say a music hall, then.  In a theatre, you’re so bound to listen for the sake of the other people who want to hear.  We’ll go to the Palace.”

She nodded her head in assent.  There was no concealment of her mood, no hiding of her unhappiness.  Even with this man above all others, whom she well knew was thoroughly aware of the relationship that existed between Traill and herself, she could not shake off the entangling folds of her depression, lift eyes that were laughing, throw head back and face it out until the ordeal of being in his company was over.  At moments she tried—­drove a smile to her lips for him to see; but she felt that it did not convince him; knew that it utterly failed to convince herself.  When he began to speak about Traill, it faded completely from her expression.

“Jack’s gone to a theatre to-night, hasn’t he?” he asked ingenuously, when they had half struggled through the courses.

“Yes—­”

“Duke of York’s, isn’t it?”

“Yes—­I think it is.”

He watched her closely, but her eyes were lowered persistently to her plate, or wandering aimlessly from table to table, never meeting his.  The thought that this man might guess the running of the current of events, stung her to some show of pride that yet was not keen enough, not great enough in itself to master, even for the moment, the despair within.  All the making up for the part it lent; but the acting of it was beyond her.

“You’ve met his sister, Mrs. Durlacher—­haven’t you?” he asked presently.

She saw no motive in this.  She felt thankful for it—­glad to be able to say that she had.

“She was at Prince’s the other day when I was there and she told me that Jack had taken you down to Apsley.”

“Yes, I went down with him in April.”

“Lovely place—­isn’t it?”

“Yes, I thought it was wonderful.  Did Mrs. Durlacher talk to you about me at all?”

She could not hold herself from that curiosity.  Into her voice she drilled all the orderliness of casual inquiry; but give way to it she must.  Devenish thought of all the things that Traill’s sister had said to him; he thought of the many others, far more potent, that she had left unsaid in the silent parenthesis of insinuation.