There was a bar at the front of the restaurant--a cheerful, domestic bar of the Italian sort, with a bright-eyed, smiling, middle-aged woman in charge. She knew Mosscrop, and flashed a kindly glance of southern comradeship at him as he came forward, and stopped and drew his cheque-book from his pocket. There were also two girls in the bar, and they knew him too, and grinned gently at his salute. Vestalia watched them narrowly, and fancied that one of them also winked. “I had to stop and get some more money,” he explained, when they were in the street together. “There isn’t another place in these parts where they would change a cheque.” “I noticed that they seemed to know you,” she replied, with reserve. “Dear people that they are!” he cried. “The sight of them in the morning is always delightful to me. Did you observe it--the extraordinary cheerfulness of them all? You saw how the girls chaffed the ice-man, and how the fellow who brought in the soda-water cases had his joke with the waiters, and how madame clucked and chuckled like a good hen, as if they were all her brood, and everybody seemed to like everybody else?” “I didn’t get the notion that they were very keen about me,” remarked Vestalia. “As a matter of sober fact, they scowled.” “Nonsense! Of course they were deferential to you--you represented a sort of dignified unaccustomedness to them, and they were afraid to beam at you. But bless you, they’re as simple and as sweet-hearted as children. They laugh and smile at people just out of pure native amiability. The place is as good as a tonic to me of a morning when I am feeling blue and out of sorts.” “But you are not _this_ morning,” she reminded him. For answer he drew her hand through his arm. They fell into step, and moved along at a sauntering gait on their way toward Oxford Street. It was mid-August, and there had been a shower overnight. The pavement still showed damp in its crevices, and the air was clear and fresh. A pale hazy sunshine began to mark out shadows in the narrow thoroughfares. By-and-by it would be hot and malodorous here, but just now the sense of summer’s charm found them out even in Soho. She had asked him about himself. The question had risen naturally enough to her lips, and she had propelled it without diffidence. But when the words actually sounded in her own ears, they frightened her. The inquiry seemed all at once personal to the point of rudeness. The possibility of his resenting her curiosity rose in her mind, and on the instant flared upward into painful certainty. “Oh, forgive me; I had no business to ask you!” she hurriedly added. He laughed, and patted her arm. “Why on earth shouldn’t you?” “I spoke without thinking,” she faltered. “I suppose--that is, it occurs to me--perhaps gentlemen don’t like to be questioned--what I mean is, you didn’t answer, and I was afraid----”