“There you are!”

Maud opened her eyes with a start.  The voice had sounded like Geoffrey’s.  But it was a stranger who stood by the table.  And not a particularly prepossessing stranger.  In the dim light of Ye Cosy Nooke, to which her opening eyes had not yet grown accustomed, all she could see of the man was that he was remarkably stout.  She stiffened defensively.  This was what a girl who sat about in tea-rooms alone had to expect.

“Hope I’m not late,” said the stranger, sitting down and breathing heavily.  “I thought a little exercise would do me good, so I walked.”

Every nerve in Maud’s body seemed to come to life simultaneously.  She tingled from head to foot.  It was Geoffrey!

He was looking over his shoulder and endeavouring by snapping his fingers to attract the attention of the nearest distressed gentlewoman; and this gave Maud time to recover from the frightful shock she had received.  Her dizziness left her; and, leaving, was succeeded by a panic dismay.  This couldn’t be Geoffrey!  It was outrageous that it should be Geoffrey!  And yet it undeniably was Geoffrey.  For a year she had prayed that Geoffrey might be given back to her, and the gods had heard her prayer.  They had given her back Geoffrey, and with a careless generosity they had given her twice as much of him as she had expected.  She had asked for the slim Apollo whom she had loved in Wales, and this colossal changeling had arrived in his stead.

We all of us have our prejudices.  Maud had a prejudice against fat men.  It may have been the spectacle of her brother Percy, bulging more and more every year she had known him, that had caused this kink in her character.  At any rate, it existed, and she gazed in sickened silence at Geoffrey.  He had turned again now, and she was enabled to get a full and complete view of him.  He was not merely stout.  He was gross.  The slim figure which had haunted her for a year had spread into a sea of waistcoat.  The keen lines of his face had disappeared altogether.  His cheeks were pink jellies.

One of the distressed gentlewomen had approached with a slow disdain, and was standing by the table, brooding on the corpse upstairs.  It seemed a shame to bother her.

“Tea or chocolate?” she inquired proudly.

“Tea, please,” said Maud, finding her voice.

“One tea,” sighed the mourner.

“Chocolate for me,” said Geoffrey briskly, with the air of one discoursing on a congenial topic.  “I’d like plenty of whipped cream.  And please see that it’s hot.”

“One chocolate.”

Geoffrey pondered.  This was no light matter that occupied him.

“And bring some fancy cakes—­I like the ones with icing on them—­and some tea-cake and buttered toast.  Please see there’s plenty of butter on it.”

Maud shivered.  This man before her was a man in whose lexicon there should have been no such word as butter, a man who should have called for the police had some enemy endeavoured to thrust butter upon him.