He found the evening very long. He was restless. The memory of her kiss was exquisite, but it did not make for repose. It seemed to him intolerably stupid that he was boring himself in the billiard-room of the Grand when Corporation Road was so near. Still she had taken leave of him--if he went he might be unwelcome to her, she might be disappointing to him. Early next afternoon he received the line she had promised. It arrived with letters from the Company. They were such deeply grateful letters that they hurt him a little when he read them, but he guessed which was hers, and he opened that one first. Mixed with the pleasure with which he opened it there was the curiosity, even the--he would have refused to acknowledge it--even the slight touch of apprehension with which a man who likes a woman better than he knows her always opens her first letter. He smiled--he heard her speaking. "If you ever write, the address is 'Miss Tattie Lascelles, c/o Madame Hermiance, 42 bis Great Titchfield Street, W.' You understand? You aren't to put my name on the outside envelope at all. Blithepoint is blessing you.--R.D." If he ever wrote, did she say? By his halidom he was going to write immediately! His impulse was to beg her to dine with him, but probably she would find it easier to meet him during the day. Luncheon then. But where? The choice of a restaurant bothered him--she might be afraid of acquaintances seeing her. He bethought himself of the Café Anonyme in Soho, and entreated her to lunch with him on Thursday at two o'clock. As a postscript he scribbled, "You won't say you can't, will you? If I don't hear from you, I shall be waiting for you at the door." To enable her to reply, though he prayed that no reply would come, he added that he should stay at the Carlton. He was glad to leave Blithepoint; when the woman one liked there has gone, a place is always distressing. In the train it was agreeable to reflect that she had read his note by this time. Again he imagined her as she read it--looking down, looking up, putting it in her pocket. The little Café Anonyme had been a good idea. They would do their best for him there, and their soles à la Marguery were unequalled in London. The private rooms, too, were not unhomely, they hit the happy medium--there was no riot of red velvet and gilding, nor were there rag roses hanging askew in dusty glass epergnes. It would have been unappreciative--it would have been an insult--to ask Rosalind to be made love to in a vulgar room. He wandered about the Carlton after dinner until the last post was delivered, and was relieved to find there was nothing for him. He was sure that if she hadn't meant to go, she would have declined at once. She wouldn't raise his hopes only to dash them to the parquetry as the clock was preparing to strike; she wouldn't be thoughtless, unfeeling. Oh no, she wasn't like that!