"Already!" she exclaimed, as if amazed. "But there is not a clock that goes, and I had not the least idea of the hour. Besides, I was splitting my head to fill up this form."

Such was her notion of being exact! He had abandoned an important meeting of a committee which was doing untold mercies to her compatriots in order to keep his appointment with her; and she, whose professional business it was that evening to charm him and harmonise with him, had merely flouted the appointment. Nevertheless, her gestures and smile as she rose and came towards him were so utterly exquisite that immediately he also flouted the appointment. What, after all, could it matter whether they dined at eight, nine, or even ten o'clock?

"Thou wilt pardon me, monster?" she murmured, kissing him.

No woman had ever put her chin up to his as she did, nor with a glance expressed so unreserved a surrender to his masculinity.

She went on, twining languishingly round him:

"I do not know whether I ought to go out. I am yet far from—It is perhaps imprudent."

"Absurd!" he protested—he could not bear the thought of her not dining with him. He knew too well the desolation of a solitary dinner. "Absurd! We go in a taxi. The restaurant is warm. We return in a taxi."

"To please thee, then."

"What is that form?"

"It is for the telephone. Thou understandest how it is necessary that I have the telephone—me! But I comprehend nothing of this form."

She passed him the form. She had written her name in the space allotted. "Christine Dubois." A fair calligraphy! But what a name! The French equivalent of "Smith". Nothing could be less distinguished. Suddenly it occurred to him that Concepcion's name also was Smith.

"I will fill it up for you. It is quite simple."

"It is possible that it is simple when one is English. But English—that is as if to say Chinese. Everything contrary. Here is a pen."

"No. I have my fountain-pen." He hated a cheap pen, and still more a penny bottle of ink, but somehow this particular penny bottle of ink seemed touching in its simple ugliness. She was eminently teachable. He would teach her his own attitude towards penny bottles of ink.... Of course she would need the telephone—that could not be denied.

As Christine was signing the form Marthe entered with the chrysanthemums, which he had handed over to her; she had arranged them in a horrible blue glass vase cheaply gilded; and while Marthe was putting the vase on the small table there was a ring at the outer door. Marthe hurried off.

Christine said, kissing him again tenderly:

"Thou art a squanderer! Fine for me to tell thee not to buy costly flowers! Thou has spent at least ten shillings for these. With ten shillings—"

"No, no!" he interrupted her. "Five." It was a fib. He had paid half a guinea for the few flowers, but he could not confess it.