He rose to get it, and sat down again.

‘I hope it won’t spoil your tea if I smoke?’

‘You may in course of time observe that I am not taking tea.’

‘I wonder whose tea it is, then.’

‘Mine.’

He stared at her. At length, with the most brilliant of his smiles, he got up.

‘I say—I’m so sorry and all that. I’m afraid I have been keeping you off your perch.’

‘You have been sitting in my chair,’ she said, and sat down in it.

The chair was unpleasantly warm. The tea, on the other hand, was unpleasantly cold. The young man, standing with his back to the fire, looked down on her, and whistled under his breath. Even if the toasted bun had remained hot, it would have been impossible to enjoy it. Miss St John left it half-eaten, and took a slice of cake. The cake was stale, and so dry that she could hardly swallow it. It seemed to be moving about her mouth like a sandstorm. She gulped it down. A crumb lodged in her windpipe. Angrily and secretively, she began to choke. The young man thumped her on the back. At last, searing as a clinker, the crumb shot up again.

‘Well, now we ought to be friends for life, Miss St John,’ he said. Raising her flushed face, she glared at him through 96involuntary tears. Even more intolerable than facetiousness from a Transient was the fact that this Transient had somehow possessed himself of her name. ‘You are Miss St John, aren’t you? I’m Dennis.’

She said ‘Oh,’ and added, ‘Indeed,’ and picked up a biography. Soon after he had taken himself off, in came Mrs Fry, who collected the tea-tray, hemmed once or twice, and said, ‘I really must apologize for our Dennis being in your chair when you came in. I’m sure the poor boy was ever so sorry. But perhaps it was a bit of luck, all the same. Suppose you had been alone when you happened to choke!’

Miss St John was of the opinion that if she had been alone she would not have choked. ‘The cake was stale,’ she said.

‘Anything can happen with a choking-fit. But I do hope Dennis didn’t hit you too hard. He’s strong. He doesn’t realize how strong he is.’

Miss St John said briefly that Dennis had not hurt her in the slightest, and resumed the biography. She had had quite enough of Dennis and his strength. Shrug as she might, she could not shrug off the sensation of his masterful unembarrassed hand. That evening she sat up later than usual, turning page after page of a deceased headmaster of Eton with a deliberate consciousness of peace and quiet. It was almost midnight when she left the room. That odious young man was still dawdling at the foot of the stairs. He stood back for her to pass, but she remained in the doorway, adjusting a book-mark in the headmaster, until he was forced to precede her up the stairs, with no more than a ‘Goodnight, Miss St John.’ Even this was enough 97to recall the sensation on her back. Glancing up, rather against her will, she sought and found a glimpse of his large pink palm.