"By Jove!" he said, "I've left my stick somewhere. It must have been
at Heath's. Yes, it was. I put it on the counter while I opened this
net thing. Don't you remember? You were taking some money out of your
purse." Louis had a very distinct vision of his Rachel's agreeably
gloved fingers primly unfastening the purse and choosing a shilling
from it.

"How annoying!" murmured Rachel feelingly.

"I wouldn't lose that stick for a five-pound note." (He had a
marvellous way of saying "five-pound note.") "Would you mind very much
if I just slip over and get it, before he shuts? It's only across the
road, you know."

There was something in the politeness of the phrase "mind _very
much_" that was irresistible to Rachel. It caused her to
imagine splendid drawing-rooms far beyond her modest level, and the
superlative deportment therein of the well-born.

"Not at all!" she replied, with her best affability. "But will they
let you come in again without paying?"

"Oh, I'll risk that," he whispered, smiling superiorly.

Then he went, leaving the reticule, and she was alone.

She rearranged the reticule on the seat by her side. The reticule
being already perfectly secure, there was no need for her to touch
it, but some nervous movement was necessary to her. Yet she was less
self-conscious than she had been with Louis at her elbow. She felt,
however, a very slight sense of peril--of the unreality of the plush
fauteuil on which she sat, and those rows of vaguely discerned faces
on her right; and the reality of distant phenomena such as Mrs. Maldon
in bed. Notwithstanding her strange and ecstatic experiences with
Louis Fores that night in the dark, romantic town, the problem of the
lost money remained, or ought to have remained, as disturbing as ever.
To ignore it was not to destroy it. She sat rather tight in her place,
increasing her primness, and trying to show by her carriage that she
was an adult in full control of all her wise faculties. She set her
lips to judge the film with the cold impartiality of middle age, but
they persisted in being the fresh, responsive, mobile lips of a young
girl. They were saying noiselessly: "He will be back in a moment.
And he will find me sitting here just as he left me. When I hear him
coming I shan't turn my head to look. It will be better not."

The film showed a forest with a wooden house in the middle of it. Out
of this house came a most adorable young woman, who leaped on to a
glo