Here, moving up and down thoughtfully, she found herself elbow to elbow with Victor, who, fork in one hand and plate in the other, was also selecting, and in a practised manner spearing, pâtisserie.

‘Oh, hullo!’ said he as she hesitated. ‘Can I help you in any way? I know all these pretty well. Don’t go for the coffee kind, they look first-rate but they’re hollow. Do you mind it I take the last green one? Veronica’s fearfully keen on them. We come here a lot.’

‘So Veronica told me.’

‘Yes, by jove, she did, didn’t she?’ said Victor, remembering. ‘I say, look here, don’t wish me the usual – I feel perfectly rotten.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Sydney. Her sympathy necessarily lacked directness, because Victor was the sort of young man who continues to move about uneasily while talking and to talk for a long time without looking straight at one.

‘Still, one’s only young once,’ remarked Victor, and roamed away down the counter. Later on, she followed him out through the door, which he blocked for her by a moment’s misgivings as to the ultimate excellence of his choice.

Mrs Kerr had discovered herself back to back with a friend and had turned to converse with her. The friend was animated, Mrs Kerr sympathetic. Sydney stood a moment to watch them.

‘Delicious!’ exclaimed the friend, a dark lady from another hotel, whose party, a broken-up circle, sat listening all at a loss and turned now and then a long stare of timid resentment on the brilliant intruder.

‘Absolutely delicious!’ agreed Mrs Kerr; then, catching sight of Sydney, broke off, still laughing, and faced round once more to her table. ‘You’ve been ages, my darling,’ she cried. ‘Have you brought the whole shop?’

Sydney put down her plate on the table, showed with a gesture what exactly she had brought and silently began sipping her vermouth. ‘That “darling” must have been Ronald,’ she thought; ‘what a habit of mind he is! … Do relations become a habit?’ she asked. ‘I have so few.’

‘I dare say they might,’ said Mrs Kerr, very kind but abstracted. ‘What a pity you’ve got so few’ … she sampled the pâtisserie. ‘I mean after all, home life —— Why don’t you marry, Sydney?’

‘I thought we’d been into all that.’

‘Yes, but it does worry me rather,’ said Mrs Kerr, and turned upon her friend’s downcast pallor a profound, limpid, yet prettily conventional stare.

A sharp movement of Sydney’s foot shook the table, the china leaped on the tin. ‘Well, if you’ll keep Ronald a year or two——’