In the evening he considered buying more roses to take to her, but decided that might give the impression that he had been enjoying himself over the week-end and now had a guilty conscience; so he arrived in the Cromwell Road at half past seven empty handed but armed with an elaborate story of a millionaire who had suddenly become interested in his Kenya travel project and had insisted on carrying him off to the country on Saturday to discuss putting money into it.

To his disappointment and annoyance, his ring at the front door of Mary's flat brought no response, so evidently she was still out. Hoping that something had detained her, he hung about for nearly an hour, but she did not put in an appearance; so he was forced to the conclusion that she was so annoyed with him that she had decided to ignore the invitation he had posted to her before setting off for Wales, and had already gone out for the evening either alone, or with someone else.

Consoling himself as best he could with the thought that having been up early that morning an 'early bed' would be welcome, he ate a solitary dinner at a little restaurant in Gloucester Road and returned to Warwick Square. But it was quite a time before he got off to sleep as thinking of Mary made him realize how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again and how much, in the past fortnight, she had, almost imperceptibly, come to mean to him.

Next morning he rang her number at eight o'clock and, as there was no reply, repeated the call at half past, but still without result. It might be, he thought, that she had had to go out early to catch a train for a model show that she had been booked for somewhere outside London. On the other hand, he knew that she had very few acquaintances, so probably guessed that it was him ringing up and, still suffering from the sulks, had deliberately refrained from answering the telephone. Taking this last to be the most likely assumption, he decided to leave her for thirty-six hours to stew in her own juice.