“Yours sincerely,

“Nedda Freeland.”

The answer came: 

“Dear miss Freeland: 

“Delighted.  But if very bothery, better save time and ink, and have a snack of lunch with me to-morrow at the Elgin restaurant, close to the British Museum.  Quiet and respectable.  No flowers by request.  One o’clock.

“Very truly yours,

“Giles Cuthcott.”

Putting on ‘no flowers’ and with a fast-beating heart, Nedda, went on her first lonely adventure.  To say truth she did not know in the least how ever she was going to ask this almost strange man about a girl of doubtful character.  But she kept saying to herself:  ‘I don’t care—­he has nice eyes.’  And her spirit would rise as she got nearer, because, after all, she was going to find things out, and to find things out was jolly.  The new warmth and singing in her heart had not destroyed, but rather heightened, her sense of the extraordinary interest of all things that be.  And very mysterious to her that morning was the kaleidoscope of Oxford Street and its innumerable girls, and women, each going about her business, with a life of her own that was not Nedda’s.  For men she had little use just now, they had acquired a certain insignificance, not having gray-black eyes that smoked and flared, nor Harris tweed suits that smelled delicious.  Only once on her journey from Oxford Circus she felt the sense of curiosity rise in her, in relation to a man, and this was when she asked a policeman at Tottenham Court Road, and he put his head down fully a foot to listen to her.  So huge, so broad, so red in the face, so stolid, it seemed wonderful to her that he paid her any attention!  If he were a human being, could she really be one, too?  But that, after all, was no more odd than everything.  Why, for instance, the spring flowers in that woman’s basket had been born; why that high white cloud floated over; why and what was Nedda Freeland?

At the entrance of the little restaurant she saw Mr. Cuthcott waiting.  In a brown suit, with his pale but freckled face, and his gnawed-at, sandy moustache, and his eyes that looked out and beyond, he was certainly no beauty.  But Nedda thought:  ’He’s even nicer than I remembered, and I’m sure he knows a lot.’

At first, to be sitting opposite to him, in front of little plates containing red substances and small fishes, was so exciting that she simply listened to his rapid, rather stammering voice mentioning that the English had no idea of life or cookery, that God had so made this country by mistake that everything, even the sun, knew it.  What, however, would she drink?  Chardonnet?  It wasn’t bad here.

She assented, not liking to confess that she did not know what Chardonnet might be, and hoping it was some kind of sherbet.  She had never yet drunk wine, and after a glass felt suddenly extremely strong.