I believe I was actually less taken up with what was on the stage than with the oddness of my having been behind two sets of scenes myself; with those girls who “couldn’t possibly look upon Still Waters as ‘a man,’ exactly” and then with this man who never really considered typists as “girls.” When had he left off considering me as just a typist? How soon before that evening when we became friends? Once more I felt grateful to that evening’s compact, as I followed the tall figure with that slight dip from the broad shoulders in to the waist—that line so painfully cultivated by Major Montresor!—and let it make a path for me out of the theatre and to the waiting car. I believe I’ve always really hated going about London alone, or with just another girl! * * * * * “Now, then! Rumpelmayer’s, or the Piccadilly, or where, for tea, Nancy, before I take you on to your friend’s?” “I meant to have tea with her,” I explained. “I was going on in the bus, and getting down to Sevenoaks afterwards by the dinner-train; saying good-bye to you here.” “Oh, were you! Why not take me along too?” he suggested, looking down at me. Well! Why shouldn’t he realize in what sort of places these machines called working-girls live? He’d heard about the lawns and gardens, and so forth, of my old home. Let him see the change I’d had before—well, before that first interview in his office. Then there was Cicely. Yes, when I left her she was still rather “difficult” about my engagement—rather given to unspoken hopes that I wasn’t doing it for the money. Let her see that my (official) _fiancé_ was quite a human sort of young man—the sort that some girls really might get engaged to without a thought of his income! “My chum is a very pretty girl,” said I; “_she’s_ worth looking at——” “Fair?” “No, glorious red hair.” “Well, take me along and let me look at it!” he urged boyishly; and presently we were speeding along down the Embankment towards Marconi Mansions. I had my latch-key in my vanity-bag. I opened the door at the top of the many stone steps and led the way into the passage, which seemed about as light and wide as a good-sized drainpipe after that airy, tiled vestibule at The Lawn. Meaning to take Cicely by surprise, I quietly walked into our small front sitting-room. But it was Cicely who took me by surprise. She had, already, a visitor for tea. Thick cigarette-smoke made a blue haze above the jumble of odd bits of furniture which we’d picked up second-hand in the Old King’s Road, above the tea-table with its Persian Rose pottery, its plate of Chelsea buns and its green dish of cherries—I hoped there weren’t many stones on the floor!—a haze that half obscured Cicely’s bright head and the figure that reclined, opposite to her, in our comfiest basket-chair. I saw by the unusual garments of it that it must be—yes! Sydney Vandeleur!