“I don’t expect so. And in any case, two lonely people are less dull together than apart. And now you must go. I insist. Good-bye and—good luck.”

She left him, and as she ran down the steps to the waiting car, the words “two lonely people” rang in her ears like a tolling bell.

5
AU CAFÉ DU SOLEIL

Sunday, November 15th

The Café du Soleil in Goodge Street is always busy at lunch time on Sundays. The narrow white-walled room with its two rows of little tables attracts a clientele from an area far wider than the somewhat shabby neighbourhood that surrounds it. The customers, indeed, are a mixed collection. Many are foreign, some are shabby, a few prosperous, hardly any smart. They are united by one characteristic and one only—that they know and appreciate good food. And Enrico Volpi, the stout little Genoese who learned the art of the kitchen in Marseilles and refined it in Paris, sees that they are not disappointed.

Frank Harper, clerk in the firm of Inglewood, Browne & Company, Auctioneers and Estate Agents of Kensington, had discovered the Soleil in the course of a visit on his employer’s business to the Tottenham Court Road. He had been agreeably surprised by the food, and after his meal less agreeably by the bill. Regretfully, as he paid, he had decided that the Soleil was not an eating-house for poor men. He had resolved that so far as he was concerned it must be reserved for some special occasion.

This was such an occasion. Harper had been to a good deal of trouble to plan a meal that should be worthy of it, and Volpi, who knew a young man in love when he saw one, had excelled himself in its execution. So it was with a tone of confidence well justified that over the coffee Harper murmured to his companion:

“Well, Susan, enjoyed your lunch?”

Susan smiled contentedly.

“Frank, it’s been the dream of a lunch. I’ve made a perfect pig of myself, and I shan’t be able to eat anything at dinner. You’re a perfect genius to have found this place. If only—” Her candid grey eyes had a troubled expression.

“If only—what?”

“If only it wasn’t so ruinously expensive.”

Harper’s rather fatuous expression of happiness gave way to a look of disgust.

“Need you bring that up now?” he asked wearily. “I should have thought——”

Susan was all contrition.

“Darling, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything to spoil things. It was beastly of me.”

“Angel, you couldn’t be beastly if you tried.”

“Yes, I can, and I was. But all the same,” she went on, returning to the attack, “we’ve got to be practical sometimes.”