He refused coffee—­the cab fare had prevented that.  He quite emptied his pocket, gave the waiter sixpence, and, rising, strolled across the floor of the small room exactly the same man to the outward eye he had been for years past.  But before he reached the door he caught the glance of a little, round, elderly woman at a table close to him, and he stopped.  She had a faded, showy bonnet, and she carried her worn clothes with an air.  He recognised the companion and friend of a famous prima donna whom he had not seen for years.

“You’ve forgotten me, but I’ve not forgotten you.”

It was a cherry, Irish voice.

“I get coffee and a roll, and you have the diner a prix fixe.  And you have given me a champagne supper in your day!  Well! and how are you?”

“Nicely, thank you, Miss O’Meara; you see I have not forgotten!” Then in a lower voice, “But I thought the Signora left you money?”

“She did, bless her; but it was here one day and gone the next!  Good-night, and good luck to you,” she laughed.

The little duenna of a dead genius evidently did not want him to stay, and he felt his way down the pitch dark stairs, and emerged on the street.  A very small, brown hand was held out for a penny, and for the first time in his life he refused a street beggar with real regret.

“‘Here one moment, and gone the next,’” he muttered, looking down the brilliantly lighted street to where the motors, carriages, and cabs crowded round the doors of a great theatre.  “It’s the history of the whole show in a nutshell.”

If Sir Edmund was troubled at the thought that Molly believed in him, Molly was infinitely more troubled at his belief in her.

After he left her she went to her room.  She had to dine out and she must get some rest first.  As in most of the late eighteenth century houses in London, the bedrooms had been sacrificed to the rooms below.  But Molly had the one very large room that looked over the park.  She threw herself down on a wide sofa close to the silk-curtained bed.  The sun glinted still on the silver backs of the brushes and teased her eyes, and she got up and drew down the blinds.  The dressing-table was large and its glass top was covered with a great weight of old gilt bottles and boxes.

Miss Carew had once been amused by the comment of a young manicurist who, after expressing enthusiastic admiration of the table, had concluded with the words: 

“But what I often say to myself is that it’s only so much more to leave in the end.”

But Molly had not laughed when the words were repeated; they gave expression to a feeling with which she sometimes looked at many things besides her dressing-table—­they might all prove only so much more to leave in the end!