He rationalized it as pride. He had come here for dinner, and he would have dinner. Still, he had the sense not to keep up any imbecile pretence of actually enjoying it. His pride, hoping to conceal the still more unpalatable truth, told him to see the thing in terms of a face-saving ordeal. Mechanically he ordered random dishes from the menu; the wine-waiter placed the list before him, and he forced himself to look through it and choose a sound claret. Ritual gestures, to clutch at the rags of his self-respect! All the time he felt certain that he would never again see any experience as meaningful unless it were connected in some way with the girl in the Oak Lounge. He recalled, wryly, the callow scorn he had once poured on the irrational and ‘romantic’ obsessions—the death-wish, the dream-world, love at first sight, and the rest—for, like all the immature, he had looked down on romanticism for its immaturity.

How many more of his failures in comprehension was he doomed to expiate? Did this happen to everyone, that their errors swung back upon them and crushed them? He lifted his eyes questioningly, as if some answer to his problems might be written in code on the wall, but they met only the expressionless eyes of the waiter who was coming over to serve him with a dish of ice cream and plums, though he had ordered cheese and biscuits.

The ice cream tasted of soap. The plums were sour. Charles pushed the dish aside with a despairing gesture; despairing because he knew that even if the food had been delicious he would have been unable to swallow it. His throat muscles had been tightening and tightening until, by now, he would have felt unequal to swallowing a sip of water. His mouth was dry. His heart hammered. Dragging out one of his expensive cigarettes, he lit it, and took a great draught of the smoke. Feeling a little better as the nicotine muffled the keenness of his nervous anguish, he exhaled and watched the smoke spread out like a fan in front of his face. Through it he saw the door open gently. The smooth man, reflecting the shaded lights in a benign radiance from his glasses, padded in. He held the door open again. Again the girl walked through. Again she looked up at him with big dark eyes, and again she smiled. But this time she spoke.

‘Thank you, Uncle’—he heard her clearly.

As she passed his table Charles saw that there was no ring on any of her fingers.

Somehow he must have paid his bill and got out, because, although he remembered nothing about it, he was back in the loft later that evening. His companions did not seem to notice any­thing unusual about him. Froulish asked him if he felt better for having broken the monotony.