“I’m very sorry, Mildred.  I beg your pardon.”

He had to force the words out.  It was a horrible effort.

“Now you’ve said that I don’t mind telling you that I wish I had come out with you that evening.  I thought Miller was a gentleman, but I’ve discovered my mistake now.  I soon sent him about his business.”

Philip gave a little gasp.

“Mildred, won’t you come out with me tonight?  Let’s go and dine somewhere.”

“Oh, I can’t.  My aunt’ll be expecting me home.”

“I’ll send her a wire.  You can say you’ve been detained in the shop; she won’t know any better.  Oh, do come, for God’s sake.  I haven’t seen you for so long, and I want to talk to you.”

She looked down at her clothes.

“Never mind about that.  We’ll go somewhere where it doesn’t matter how you’re dressed.  And we’ll go to a music-hall afterwards.  Please say yes.  It would give me so much pleasure.”

She hesitated a moment; he looked at her with pitifully appealing eyes.

“Well, I don’t mind if I do.  I haven’t been out anywhere since I don’t know how long.”

It was with the greatest difficulty he could prevent himself from seizing her hand there and then to cover it with kisses.

LX

They dined in Soho.  Philip was tremulous with joy.  It was not one of the more crowded of those cheap restaurants where the respectable and needy dine in the belief that it is bohemian and the assurance that it is economical.  It was a humble establishment, kept by a good man from Rouen and his wife, that Philip had discovered by accident.  He had been attracted by the Gallic look of the window, in which was generally an uncooked steak on one plate and on each side two dishes of raw vegetables.  There was one seedy French waiter, who was attempting to learn English in a house where he never heard anything but French; and the customers were a few ladies of easy virtue, a menage or two, who had their own napkins reserved for them, and a few queer men who came in for hurried, scanty meals.

Here Mildred and Philip were able to get a table to themselves.  Philip sent the waiter for a bottle of Burgundy from the neighbouring tavern, and they had a potage aux herbes, a steak from the window aux pommes, and an omelette au kirsch.  There was really an air of romance in the meal and in the place.  Mildred, at first a little reserved in her appreciation—­“I never quite trust these foreign places, you never know what there is in these messed up dishes”—­was insensibly moved by it.

“I like this place, Philip,” she said.  “You feel you can put your elbows on the table, don’t you?”

A tall fellow came in, with a mane of gray hair and a ragged thin beard.  He wore a dilapidated cloak and a wide-awake hat.  He nodded to Philip, who had met him there before.

“He looks like an anarchist,” said Mildred.