Everything was ready for the two o’clock patient. There was no excuse for lingering any longer. Half past one. Why did they not come up? On her way to the door she opened the corner cupboard and stood near the open door hungry, listening for footsteps on the basement stairs, dusting and ranging the neat rows of bottles. At the end of five minutes she went guiltily down. If he had finished his lunch they would wonder why she had lingered so long. If she had hurried down as soon as she could no one would have known that she hoped to have lunch alone. Now because she had waited deliberately someone would read her guilt. She wished she were one of those people who never tried to avoid anything. The lunch-room door opened and closed as she reached the basement stairs. James’s cheerful footsteps clacked along—neat high-heeled shoes—towards the kitchen. She had taken something in. They were still at lunch, unconsciously, just in the same way. No. She was glad she was not one of those people who just went on—not avoiding things....

Mr. Hancock was only just beginning his second course. He must have lingered in the workshop.... He was helping himself to condiments; Mr. Orly proffered the wooden pepper mill; “oh—thank you”; he screwed it with an air of embarrassed appreciativeness. There was a curious fresh lively air of embarrassment in the room making a stirring warmth in its cellar-like coolness. Miriam slipped quietly into her place hoping she was not an interloper. At any rate everyone was too much engrossed to ponder over her lateness. Mr. Orly was sitting with his elbows on the table and his serviette crumpled in his hands, ready to rise from the table, beaming mildness and waiting. Mrs. Orly sat waiting and smiling with her elbows on the table.

“Ah,” said Mr. Orly gently as Miriam sat down, “here comes the clerical staff.”

Miriam beamed and began her soup. It was James waiting to-day too, with her singing manner; a happy day.

Mrs. Orly asked a question in her happiest voice. They were fixing a date.... They were going ... to a theatre ... together. Her astonished mind tried to make them coalesce ... she saw them sitting in a row, two different worlds confronted by one spectacle ... there was not a scrap of any kind of performance that would strike them both in the same way.

“Got anything on on Friday Miss Henderson?”

The sudden question startled her. Had it been asked twice? She answered, stammering, in amazed consciousness of what was to follow and accepted the invitation in a flood of embarrassment. Her delight and horror and astonishment seemed to flow all over the table. Desperately she tried to gather in all her emotions behind an easy appreciative smile. She felt astonishment and dismay coming out of her hair, swelling her hands, making her clumsy with her knife and fork. Far away, beyond her grasp was the sense she felt she ought to have, the sense of belonging; socially. It was being offered. But something or someone was fighting it. Always, everywhere someone or something was fighting it.

Mr. Orly had given a ghostly little chuckle. “Like dining at restaurants?” he asked kindly and swiftly.

“I don’t think I ever have.”

“Then we shall have the pleasure of initiating you. Like caviare?”

“I don’t even know what it is” said Miriam trying to bring gladness into her voice. “Oh—this is great. Caviare to the million eh?—oh, I ought not to have put it like that, things one would rather have said otherwise—no offence intended—none taken I hope—don’t yeh know really?—Sturgeon’s roe, y’know.”

“Oh, I know I don’t like roe” said Miriam gravely.

“Chalk it up. Miss Henderson doesn’t like roe.”

Miriam flushed. Pressing back through her anger to what had preceded she found inspiration.

“My education has been neglected.”

“Quite so, but now’s your chance. Seize your opportunity; carpe diem. See?”

“I thought it was caviare, not carp” said Mr. Hancock quietly.

Was it a rescue, or a sacrifice to the embarrassing occasion? She had never heard him jest with the Orlys. Mrs. Orly chuckled gleefully, flashing out the smile that Miriam loved. It took every line from her care-fashioned face and lit it with a most extraordinary radiance. She had smiled like that as a girl in response to the jests of her many brothers ... her eyes were sweet; there was a perfect sweetness in her somewhere.

“Bravo Hancock, that’s a good one.... Ye gods and fishes large and small listen to that” he murmured half turning towards the door.

The clattering of boots on the stone stairs was followed by the rattling of the loose door knob and the splitting open of the door. Mr. Leyton shot into the room searching the party with a swift glance and taking his place in the circle in a state of headlong silent volubility. By the way he attacked his lunch it was clear he had a patient waiting or imminent. It occurred to Miriam to wonder why he did not always arrange his appointments round about lunch-time ... but any such manoeuvre would be discovered and things would be worse than ever. Mr. Orly watched quietly while he refused Mrs. Orly’s offer to ring for soup, devouring bread and butter until she should have carved for him,—and then extended his invitation to his son.

“Oh, is this the annual?” asked Mr. Leyton gruffly. “What’s the show?”

“My dear will you be so good as to inform Mr. Leyton of——”

“Don’t be silly Ro” said Mrs. Orly trying to laugh “we’re going to Hamlet Ley.”

“We have the honour of begging Mr. Leyton’s company on the occasion of our visit, dinner included, to——”

“What’s the date?” rapped Mr. Leyton with his tumbler to his lips.

“The date, ascertained as suited to all present with the exception of your lordship—oh my God, Ley” sighed Mr. Orly hiding his face in his serviette, his huge shoulders shaking.

“What have I done now?” asked Mr. Leyton, gasping after his long drink.

“Don’t be so silly Ley. You haven’t answd fathez queshun.”

“How can I answer till I’m told the date?”

“Don’t be silly, you can come any evening.”

“Friday” whispered Miriam.

“What?” said Mr. Orly softly, emerging from his serviette, “a traitor in the camp?”

“Friday is it? Well, then it’s pretty certain I can’t come.”

“Don’t be silly Ley—you haven’t any engagements.”

“Haven’t I? There’s a sing-song at Headquarters Friday.”

“Enough, my dear, enough, press him no more” said Mr. Orly rising. “Far be it from us to compete. Going to sing Ley or to song, eh? Never mind boy, sorry you can’t come” he added, sighing gustily as he left the room.

“You’ll be able to come Ley won’t you?” whispered Mrs. Orly impatiently lingering.

“If you’d only let me know the date beforehand instead of springing it on me.” “Don’t be si’y Ley it vexes Father so. You needn’t go to the si’y sing-song.”

“I don’t see how I can get out of it. It’s rather a big function; as an officer I ought to be there.”

“Oh never mind; you’d better come.”

Mr. Orly called from the stairs.

“All right darling” she said in anxious cheerful level tones hurrying to the door. “You must come Ley, you can manage somehow.”

Miriam sat feeling wretchedly about in her mind. Mr. Leyton was busily finishing his lunch. In a moment Mr. Hancock would re-assert himself by some irrelevant insincerity. She found courage to plunge into speech, on the subject of her two lessons at the school. Her story strove strangely against the echoes and fell, impeded. It was an attempt to create a quiet diversion.... It should have been done violently ... how many times had she seen it done, the speaker violently pushing off what had gone before and protruding his diversion, in brisk animated deliberately detached tones. But it was never really any good. There was always a break and a wound, something left unhealed, something standing unlearned ... something that can only grow clear in silence....

“You’ll never learn cycling like that” said Mr. Leyton with the superior chuckle of the owner of a secret, as he snatched up a biscuit and made off. She clung fearfully to his cheerful harassed departing form. There was nothing left now in the room but the echoes. Mr. Hancock sat munching his biscuits and cheese with a look of determined steely preoccupation in his eyes that were not raised above the level of the spread of disarray along the table; but she could hear the busy circulation of his thoughts. If now she could endure for a moment. But her mind flung hither and thither seeking with a loathed servility some alien neutral topic. She knew anything she might say with the consciousness of his thoughts in her mind would be resented and slain. To get up and go quietly away with some murmured remark about her work would be to leave him with his judgment upon him. What he wanted was to give her an instruction about something in a detached professional voice and get rid of her, believing that she had gone unknowing, and remaining in his circle of reasonable thoughts. She hit out with all her force, coming against the buttress of silent angry forehead with random speech.

“I can’t believe that it’s less than two months to the longest day.”

“Time flies” responded Mr. Hancock grimly. She recoiled exhausted by her effort and quailed under the pang in the midday gaslit room of realisation of the meaning of her words. Her eye swept over the grey-clad form and the blunted features seeking some power that would stay the inexorable consumption of the bright passing days.

“‘Tempus fugit’ I suppose one ought to say” he said with a little laugh getting up.

“Oui,” said Miriam angrily, “le temps s’envole; die Zeit vergeht, in other words.”