in
the matter.

Under the influence of such considerations Kendal did
not write to Elfrida at the _Age_ office asking her
address, as he had immediately resolved to do when he
discovered that she had gone away without telling him
where he might find her. It seemed to him that he could
not very well see her at her lodgings. And the pleasure
of coming upon her suddenly as she closed the door of
the _Age_ behind her and stepped out into Fleet Street
a fortnight later overcame him too quickly to permit him
to reflect that he was yielding to an opposite impulse
in asking her to dine with him at Baliero's, as they
might have done in Paris. It was an unlooked-for
opportunity, and it roused a desire which he had not
lately been calculating upon--a desire to talk with her
about all sorts of things, to feel the exhilaration of
her artistic single-mindedness, to find out more about
her, to guess at the meanings behind her eyes. If any
privileged cynic had taken the chance to ask him whether
he found her eyes expressive of purely abstract
significance, Kendal would have answered affirmatively
in all honesty. And he would have added a confession of
his curiosity to discover what she was capable of, if
she was capable of anything--which he considered legitimate
enough. At the moment, however, he had no time to think
of anything but an inducement, and he dashed through
whole pickets of scruples to find one. "They give one
such capital strawberry ices at Baliero's," he begged
her to believe. His resolutions did not even reassert
themselves when she refused. He was conscious only that
it was a bore that she should refuse, and very inconsistent;
hadn't she often dined with him at the Cafe Florian? His
gratification was considerable when she added, "They
smoke there, you know," and, it became obvious, by whatever
curious process of reasoning she arrived at it, that it
was Baliero's restaurant she objected to, and not his
society.

"Well," he urged, "there are plenty of places where they
don't smoke, though it didn't occur to me that--"

"Oh," she laughed; "but you must allow it to occur to
you," and she put her finger on her lip. Considering
their solitariness in the crowd, he thought, there was
no reason why he should not say that he was under the
impression she liked the smell of tobacco.

"There are other places," she went on. "There is a sweet
little green-and-white place like a dairy in Oxford
Street, that calls itself