“I don’t think there’d be much wrong with a drink of some sort,” Chubby remarked. “Damn, someone’s pinched the cigarette I left here. What about some iced-coffee, Miss Arden, or cider-cup?”

Elizabeth thought she would have cider-cup, so Chubby told a waiter to bring it, with two sardines on toast.

“I couldn’t possibly eat sardines,” Elizabeth protested.

“Good Lord, no!” Chubby said. “Only it’s after hours, and the rule of this blasted country is that you can’t have intoxicants after hours unless you have supper as well. So you order sardines. Everybody does, an’ nobody eats them. Some cove wafts them away when they get too racy, an’ they travel on to the next table. You’ll see: our sardines’ll be looking pretty weary by the time they reach us.”

They were certainly dissipated, those sardines, and, they smelt very oily. Someone begged Chubby to bury them in the flower-pot at his elbow. To Elizabeth’s horror he promptly rose, and tipped them into the pot, where they probably made excellent manure for the azalea.

Then Sarah came to Elizabeth, with a fair, monocled man at her heels.

“Elizabeth, I want to introduce Mr. Ramsay. The novelist, you know. Stephen, this is Miss Arden.”

Stephen Ramsay had grey-blue eyes, and thin cheeks; Elizabeth thought he was interesting, and she admired his teeth, which were very straight and white. She had not read any of his books, which was awkward, but she remembered that she had seen his portrait in the “Bookman.”

“Shall I be taking anyone’s chair if I sit here?” he asked, placing himself beside Elizabeth.

“Yes, mine,” said Chubby, coming away from the flower-pot. “I say, thanks awfully for that dance, Miss Arden. What about it, Sarah?”

“I don’t mind,” Sarah said graciously. “As long as you’re not too energetic.”

Stephen Ramsay did not seem to want to dance; he watched Chubby take Sarah on to the floor, and then he looked again at Elizabeth. She wondered whether she ought to say something about his books, but that was so difficult. Instead she asked whether he came often to the club.

“No, I’m a spare man,” he answered. His eyes crinkled attractively at the corners. “Cynthia—my sister—got an S. O. S. message from Lucy Elmsley this afternoon to scratch up a male. So here I am. I’m glad I came now.”

Because she was very young and nervous Elizabeth said one of those silly things that girls say before they have gained their poise. She asked, why? quite innocently. As soon as the word escaped her she realised that Stephen had paid her a subtle compliment, and she blushed hotly, afraid that he should think she was courting a more direct compliment. To cover her mistake she asked him hurriedly whether he had seen Chubby’s way of getting rid of sardines.