Well, Christopher didn’t want her to; he was only too glad that she wouldn’t go on. He now thought of George as a narrow man, with a head shaped like a box and a long upper lip. But she had been right to bring him out and air him conversationally, once he had been thrust between them by his own incredible idiocy, and it did seem to have quieted poor old George down a bit, for he didn’t again leap up unbidden to Christopher’s tongue. His ghost was laid. The dinner proceeded without him; and they had begun it so early that, even drawn out to its utmost limit of innumerable cigarettes and the slowest of coffee-drinking and sipping of unwanted liqueurs, it couldn’t be made to last beyond nine o’clock. What can you expect if you will begin before seven, thought the head waiter, watching the gentleman’s desperate efforts to stay where he was. Impossible to take her home and be parted from her before ten. It would be dreadful enough to have to at eleven, but the sheer horribleness of ten flashed an inspiration into Christopher’s mind: they would go to <i>The Immortal Hour</i> for whatever was left of it. So they went, and were in time for the love scene, as well as for the whole of the last act. Now, indeed, was Christopher perfectly happy, as he sat beside Catherine in the thrice-blessed theatre where they had first met and compared the past with the present. Only a week ago they were there,--together indeed, but met as usual without his being sure they were going to meet, and he hadn’t even known where she lived. They were strangers,--discussing, as strangers would on such an occasion, the Celtic legends; and George, and Stephen, and the Hertford Street drawing-room, and even Ned in his car and the fluttering Fanshawes, now such vivid permanences in his mind, were still sleeping, as far as he was concerned, in the womb of time. Only a week ago and he had never touched her, never shaken hands, never said anything at all to her that could be considered--well, personal. Now he had said many such things; and although she had been restive over some of them, and although he knew he must proceed with such prudence as he could manage, yet please God, he told himself, he’d say many more of them before another week had passed.