Dartrey glanced back at the hall stand.  There was no hat or coat there except his own.  He followed Nora into the little study, which was separated only by a curtain from the dining room.

“I think your idea is excellent,” he pronounced.  “And you will forgive me,” he added, producing the parcel which he had been carrying under his arm.  “See what I have brought to drink your health and his, even if he does not know yet the good fortune in store for him.”

He set down a bottle of champagne upon the table.  She laughed softly.

“You dear man!” she exclaimed.  “Fancy your thinking of it!  I thought you scarcely ever touched wine?”

“I am not a crank,” he replied.  “Sometimes my guests have told me that I have quite a reasonably good cellar for a man who takes so little himself.  To-night I am going to drink a glass of champagne.”

“Pommery!” she exclaimed.  “I hope you’ll be able to open it.”

“That shall be my task,” he promised.  “You needn’t worry about flippers.  I have some in my pocket.  And by the by,” he added, glancing at the clock, “where is your other guest?  It is ten minutes past eight, and I can hear your chafing-dish sizzling.”

She threw back the curtain and took his arm.  The table was laid for two.  He looked at it in bewilderment and then back at her.

“He has disappointed you?”

She smiled up at him.

“He has disappointed me many, many times,” she said, “but not to-night.”

“I don’t—­understand,” he faltered.

“I think you do,” she answered.

He took the chair opposite to hers.  The chafing-dish was between them.  He was filled with a curious sense of unreality.  It was a little scene, this, out of a story or a play.  It didn’t actually concern him.  It wasn’t Nora who sat within a few feet of him, bending down over the chafing-dish and stirring its contents vigorously.

“Of course,” she said, “I am perfectly well aware that this is an anti-climax.  I am perfectly well aware, too, that you will have a most uncomfortable dinner.  You won’t know what to say to me and you’ll be dying all the time to look in your calendar and see if this is leap year.  But even we working women sometimes,” she went on, smiling bravely up at him, “have whims.  I had a whim, Stephen, to let you know that I am very stupidly fond of you, and although it isn’t your fault and I expect nothing from you except that you do not alter our friendship, you just stand in the way whenever I think of marrying any one.”

Perhaps because speech seemed so inadequate, Dartrey said nothing.  He sat looking at her with a queer emotion in his soft, studious eyes, drumming a little on the table with his finger tips, not quite sure what it meant that his heart was beating like a young man’s and a queer sensation of happiness was stealing through his whole being.

“Nothing in the world,” he murmured, “could alter our friendship.”