‘You’ve no idea how lonely I am,’ he said, putting them down near her. ‘Are you? I’m very sorry. But--are you really? I should imagine you with heaps and heaps of friends. You’re so--so----’ She hesitated. ‘So warm-hearted,’ she finished; and couldn’t help smiling as she said it, for he was apparently very warm-hearted indeed. His heart, like his hair, seemed incandescent. ‘Heaps and heaps of friends don’t make one less lonely as long as one hasn’t got--well, the one person. No, I won’t smoke. Who is Stephen?’ How abrupt. She couldn’t leap round with this quickness. ‘Stephen?’ she repeated, a little bewildered. Then she remembered, and her face again brimmed with amusement. ‘Oh yes--you thought I was going to take him to the Zoo to-morrow,’ she said. ‘The Zoo! Why, he’s preaching to-morrow evening at St. Paul’s. You’d better go and listen.’ He caught hold of her hands. ‘You must tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘You <i>must</i>.’ ‘I told you I’ll tell you anything,’ she said, pulling her hands away. ‘Is Stephen--are you--you’re not going to marry Stephen?’ For a moment she stared at him in profound astonishment. Then she burst into laughter, and laughed and laughed till her eyes really did cry. ‘Oh, my dear boy--oh, my dear, dear boy!’ she laughed, wiping her eyes while he sat and watched her. And at that moment Mrs. Mitcham appeared at the door and announced two ladies--their miserable name sounded like Fanshawe--and two ladies, who might well be Fanshawes, immediately swam in and enveloped Catherine in arms of enormous length, it seemed to him, kissing her effusively--how deeply he hated them--and exclaiming in incoherent twitters that they had come to carry her off, that the car was there, that they wouldn’t take no, that Ned was waiting---- Lord, what snakes. He went away at once. No good staying just to see her being clawed away by Fanshawes to the waiting Ned. And who the devil was Ned? Yes, there he was--waiting right enough, sitting snugly in a Daimler that looked very new and expensive, while the porter, a changed man, hovered solicitously near. Ned needed every bit of the new Daimler and the fur rug and the hideously smart chauffeur to make up for the shape of his silly nose, thought Christopher, scornfully striding off down the street. IV Till the following Friday his week was harassed. It was wonderful to be in love, to have found her, but it would have been still more wonderful if he had known a little more about her. He wanted to be able to think of her and follow her through each minute of the day,--picture her, see her in his mind’s eye doing this and doing that, going here and going there; and there was nothing but a blank.