He smiled at her sardonically. She knew that he seldom missed anything, but his sharp observation in the midst of the squash of people going out of the cafe took her genuinely aback. And then he had got at her thought, at one of her most definite thoughts at least, about the brown stranger! “You are disgustingly clever,” she said, as they made their way out, followed by the Georgians and their attendant cosmopolitans. “I believe I dislike you for it to-night.” “Then take a cab home and I’ll walk.” “No, thank you. I’d rather endure your abominable intelligence.” He smiled, curling up the left corner of his sensual mouth. “Come on then. Don’t bother about good-byes to all these fools. They’ll never stop talking if they once begin good-bying. Like sheep they don’t know how to get away from each other since they’ve been herded together. Come on! Come on!” He thrust an arm through hers and almost roughly, but forcibly, got her away through the throng. As he did so she was pushed by, or accidentally pushed against, several people. For a brief instant she was in contact with a man. She felt his side, the bone of one of his hips. It was the man who had looked at her in the cafe. She saw in the night the gleam of his big brown eyes looking down into hers. Then she and Garstin were tramping--Garstin always seemed to be tramping when he walked--over the pavement of Regent Street. “Catch on tight! Let’s get across and down to Piccadilly.” “Very well.” Presently they were passing the Ritz. They got away from the houses on that side. Now on their left were the tall railings that divided them from the stretching spaces of the Park shrouded in the darkness and mystery of night. “Well, my girl, what are you after?” said Garstin, who never troubled about the conventionalities, and seemed never to care what anyone thought of him and his ways. “Go ahead. Let me have it. I’m not coming in to your beastly hotel, you know. So get on with your bow wow Dowager.” “So you remember that I had begun--” “Of course I do.” “Do you ever miss anything--let anything escape you?” “I don’t know. Well, what is it?” “I wanted to tell you something about Lady Sellingworth which has puzzled me and a friend of mine. It is a sort of social mystery.” “Social! Oh, Lord!” “Now, Dick, don’t be a snob. You are a snob in your pretended hatred of all decent people.” “D’you call your society dames decent?” “Be quiet if you can! You’re worse than a woman.” He did not say anything. His horsey profile looked hard and expressionless in the night. As she glanced at it she could not help thinking of Newmarket. He ought surely to have been a jockey with that face and figure. “You are listening?”