ou
particularly wish it," he said. "I only came here with a lot of our
fellows to see the Biograph, and I shan't stop now that's over. I'm
getting jolly hungry, too. If you have no other engagement suppose we
were to go and have a bit of supper somewhere?"

For some reason or other which she was quite unable to define, these
words, although they were spoken with perfect politeness, and although
she had heard them scores of times before without offence, now almost
offended her. And yet there was no real reason why they should.

She had been out to supper with pretty nearly all sorts and conditions
of men. Why should she not go with this well-groomed, athletic-looking
young fellow who had already done her a considerable service, who was
obviously a gentleman, and whose face and expression had now begun to
strike her as so curiously like her own?

She really had no other engagement for the evening, and to refuse would
be, to say the least of it, ungracious; so, after a moment's
hesitation, she took her hand away and said with a quick upward glance
of her eyes:

"Very well, I was just beginning to think about supper myself when I
turned up out there in that absurd way, so we may as well have it
together. Where were you thinking of going? Suppose we were to try the
grill-room at the Troc. Of course everywhere will be pretty crowded
to-night, but we have as good a chance of getting a table there as
anywhere else. Besides, I know one or two of the waiters. I often go
there to lunch."

"Very well," he said; "come along." And in a few minutes more they were
rolling along in a hansom down Shaftesbury Avenue.

Vane Maxwell was in very good humour that night with himself and all the
world. He had taken a double first in Mods., in History and Classics,
after crowning a brilliant career at Eton with a Balliol Scholarship. He
was stroke of his college boat, and had worked her four places up the
river. In another year he might be in the 'Varsity Eight itself, and
help to avenge the defeat which the Dark Blues had just suffered. The
sweetheart he had won in that Homeric little battle behind the
wheelhouse had been faithful to him ever since. He had an abundance of
pocket money and the prospect of a fair fortune, and altogether the
world appeared to be a very pleasant place indeed to live in.

When they got into the cab the girl half expected that he would slip his
arm round her as others were wont to do when they had the chance,