Maud sipped her tea in silence.  Her heart was like lead within her.  The recurrence of the butter theme as a sort of leit motif in her companion’s conversation was fraying her nerves till she felt she could endure little more.  She cast her mind’s eye back over the horrid months and had a horrid vision of Geoffrey steadily absorbing butter, day after day, week after week—­ever becoming more and more of a human keg.  She shuddered.

Indignation at the injustice of Fate in causing her to give her heart to a man and then changing him into another and quite different man fought with a cold terror, which grew as she realized more and more clearly the magnitude of the mistake she had made.  She felt that she must escape.  And yet how could she escape?  She had definitely pledged herself to this man. ("Ah!” cried Geoffrey gaily, as the pats of butter arrived.  “That’s more like it!” He began to smear the toast.  Maud averted her eyes.) She had told him that she loved him, that he was the whole world to her, that there never would be anyone else.  He had come to claim her.  How could she refuse him just because he was about thirty pounds overweight?

Geoffrey finished his meal.  He took out a cigarette. ("No smoking, please!” said the distressed gentlewoman.) He put the cigarette back in its case.  There was a new expression in his eyes now, a tender expression.  For the first time since they had met Maud seemed to catch a far-off glimpse of the man she had loved in Wales.  Butter appeared to have softened Geoffrey.

“So you couldn’t wait!” he said with pathos.

Maud did not understand.

“I waited over a quarter of an hour.  It was you who were late.”

“I don’t mean that.  I am referring to your engagement.  I saw the announcement in the Morning Post.  Well, I hope you will let me offer you my best wishes.  This Mr. George Bevan, whoever he is, is lucky.”

Maud had opened her mouth to explain, to say that it was all a mistake.  She closed it again without speaking.

“So you couldn’t wait!” proceeded Geoffrey with gentle regret.  “Well, I suppose I ought not to blame you.  You are at an age when it is easy to forget.  I had no right to hope that you would be proof against a few months’ separation.  I expected too much.  But it is ironical, isn’t it!  There was I, thinking always of those days last summer when we were everything to each other, while you had forgotten me—­Forgotten me!” sighed Geoffrey.  He picked a fragment of cake absently off the tablecloth and inserted it in his mouth.

The unfairness of the attack stung Maud to speech.  She looked back over the months, thought of all she had suffered, and ached with self-pity.

“I hadn’t,” she cried.

“You hadn’t?  But you let this other man, this George Bevan, make love to you.”

“I didn’t!  That was all a mistake.”

“A mistake?”