‘I was just passing,’ the donkey in him blundered forth.  ’And I thought—­’

However, in fifteen seconds he was on the domestic side of the sitting-room window, and seated in the antimacassared armchair between the fire-place and the piano, and Annie had taken his hat and told him that her servant was out for the evening.

‘But I’m disturbing your supper, Miss Emery,’ he said.  Flurried though he was, he could not fail to notice the white embroidered cloth spread diagonally on the table, and the cold meat and the pastry and the glittering cutlery and crystal thereon.

‘Not at all,’ she replied.  ‘You haven’t had supper yet, I expect?’

‘No,’ he said, not thinking.

‘It will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,’ said she.

‘Oh!  But really—­’

But she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the bookcase—­and there he was!  She would take no refusal.  It was wondrous.

‘I’m awfully glad I came now,’ his thought ran; I’m managing it rather well.’

And—­

‘Poor Bob!’

His sole discomfort was that he could not invent a sufficiently ingenious explanation of his call.  You can’t tell a woman you’ve called to make love to her, and when your previous call happens to have been ten years ago, some kind of an explanation does seem to be demanded.  Ultimately, as Annie was so very pleased to see him, so friendly, so feminine, so equal to the occasion, he decided to let his presence in her abode that night stand as one of those central facts in existence that need no explanation.  And they went on talking and eating till the dusk deepened and Annie lit the gas and drew the blind.

He watched her on the sly as she moved about the room.  He decided that she did not appear a day older.  There was the same plump, erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair, the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye—­only perhaps the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be.  She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would never be twenty-three again.  Still she was a most desirable woman, and a woman infinitely beyond his deserts.) Her air of general capability impressed him.  And with that there was mingled a strange softness, a marvellous hint of a concealed wish to surrender....  Well, she made him feel big and masculine—­in brief, a man.

He regretted the lost ten years.  His present way of life seemed intolerable to him.  The new heaven opened its gate and gave glimpses of paradise.  After all, he felt himself well qualified for that paradise.  He felt that he had all along been a woman’s man, without knowing it.

‘By Jove!’ his thought ran.  ’At this rate I might propose to her in a week or two.’

And again—­