After a while I found my way into Piccadilly.  I knew very little of London, but after my solitary evening walks at Braster along the sandhills and across the marshes, the contrast was in itself suggestive and almost exciting.  I watched the people, the stream of carriages.  I listened to the low ceaseless hum of this wonderful life, and I found it fascinating.  The glow in the sky was marvellous to me—­the faces of the passers-by, the laughter and the whining, the tears and the cursing, the pleasure-seekers and the pleasure-satiated, how they all told their story as they swept by in one unceasing stream!  For a while I forgot even my appetite.  The sight of a restaurant, however, at last reminded me that I was desperately hungry.

I knew it by name—­a huge cosmopolitan place of the lower middle class, and entering I found a quiet seat, where my country clothes were not conspicuous.  There were few people about me, and those few uninteresting, so I kept my attention divided between my dinner and the evening paper.  But just as I was drawing towards the close of my meal, something happened to change all that.

A woman, followed by a man, passed my table, and the two seated themselves diagonally opposite to me.  Something in the woman’s light footsteps, her free movements, and the graceful carriage of her head, struck me instantly as being familiar.  She was dressed very plainly, and she was closely veiled.  Their entrance, too, had been unobtrusive, almost furtive.  But when she raised her veil and took the carte-du-jour in her hand, I knew her at once.  It was Mrs. Smith-Lessing.

She had not seen me, and my first impulse was to pay my bill and step quietly out.  Then by chance I glanced at her companion, and my heart stood still.  He was a tall man, over six feet, but he stooped badly, and his walk had been almost the walk of an invalid.  He had the appearance of a man who had once been stout and well built, but who was now barely recovered from a long illness.  The flesh hung in little bags underneath his bloodshot eyes, his mouth twitched continually, and the hand which rested on the table trembled.  He wore a scanty grey moustache, which failed to hide a weak thin mouth, and a very obvious wig concealed his baldness.  His clothes had seen plenty of service and his linen was doubtful.  He had evidently ordered some brandy immediately on his entrance, and his eyes met mine just as he was in the act of raising the glass to his lips.  I am convinced that he had no idea then who I was, but the earnestness of my gaze seemed to disturb him.  He set down his glass with shaking fingers, and directed his companion’s attention towards me.

They talked together earnestly for several moments.  I fancied that she was reproving him for showing alarm at my notice.  Very soon, however, she herself, after giving an order to a waiter, turned slightly round in her chair, and glanced with well-affected carelessness across at me.  I saw her start and look apprehensively at her companion.  He took the alarm at once, and I heard his eager question.