He realized that Miss Van Tuyn had made up her mind to keep both him and Jennings as her possessions of the evening, and to send Lady Sellingworth, if she would go home early, back to Berkeley Square without an escort. Her cult for her friend, though doubtless genuine, evidently weakened when there was any question of the allegiance of men. Craven made up his mind that he would not leave Lady Sellingworth until they were at the door of Number 18A, Berkeley Square. In the street he found himself by the side of Miss Van Tuyn, behind Lady Sellingworth and Ambrose Jennings, who were really a living caricature as they proceeded through the night towards Shaftesbury Avenue. The smallness of Jennings, accentuated by his bat-like cloth cloak, his ample sombrero and fantastically long stick, made Lady Sellingworth look like a moving tower as she walked at his side, like a leaning tower when she bent graciously to catch the murmur of his persistent conversation. And as over the theatres in letters of fire were written the names of the stars in the London firmament--Marie Lohr, Moscovitch, Elsie Janis--so over, all over, Lady Sellingworth seemed to be written for Craven to read: “I am really not a Bohemian.” “Do you genuinely wish Lady Sellingworth to finish the evening at the Cafe Royal?” he asked of his companion. “Yes. They would love her there. She would bring a new note.” “Probably. But would she love them?” “I don’t think you quite understand her,” said Miss Van Tuyn. “I’m quite sure I don’t. Still--” “In past years I am certain she has been to all the odd cafes of Paris.” “Perhaps. But one changes. And you yourself said there were--or was it had been?--two Adela Sellingworths, and that you only knew one.” “Yes. But perhaps at the Cafe Royal I should get to know the other.” “May she not be dead?” “I have a theory that nothing of us really dies while we live. Our abode changes. We know that. But I believe the inhabitant is permanent. We are what we were, with, of course, innumerable additions brought to us by the years. For instance, I believe that Lady Sellingworth now is what she was, to all intents and purposes, with additions which naturally have made great apparent changes in her. An old moss-covered house, overgrown with creepers, looks quite different from the same house when it is new and bare. But go inside--the rooms are the same, and under the moss and the creepers are the same walls.” “It may be so. But what a difference the moss and the creepers make. Some may be climbing roses.” Craven felt the shrewd girlish eyes were looking at him closely. “In her case some of them certainly are!” she said. “Oh, do look at them turning the corner! If Cirella were here he would have a subject for one of his most perfect caricatures. It is the leaning tower of Pisa with a bat.” The left wing of Ambrose Jennings’s cloak flew out as he whirled into Regent Street by Lady Sellingworth’s side. CHAPTER VI