more Parisian
than most French people, to call for her at the restaurant and take her
on to join a party at the Cafe Royal. She, therefore, could not go yet,
and she begged Lady Sellingworth to stay on and to finish up the
evening in the company of Georgians at little marble tables. But Lady
Sellingworth laughingly jibbed at the Cafe Royal.

"I should fall out of my _assiette_ there!" she said.

"But no one is ever surprised at the Cafe Royal, dearest. It is the one
place in London where--Ah! here is Jennings come to fetch us!"

A very small man, with a pointed black beard and wandering green eyes,
wearing a Spanish sombrero and a black cloak, and carrying an ebony
stick nearly as tall as himself, at this moment slipped furtively into
the room, and, without changing his delicately plaintive expression,
came up to Miss Van Tuyn and ceremoniously shook hands with her.

Lady Sellingworth looked for a moment at Craven.

"May I escort you home?" he said. "At any rate, let me get you a taxi."

"Lady Sellingworth, may I introduce Ambrose Jennings," said Miss Van
Tuyn in a rather firm voice at this moment.

Lady Sellingworth bent kindly to the little man far down below her.
After a word or two she said:

"Now I must go."

"Must you really? Then Mr. Craven will get you a taxi."

"If it's fine, I will walk. It seems more suitable to walk home after
dining here."

"Walk! Then let us all walk together, and we'll persuade you into the
Cafe Royal."

"Dick Garstin will be there," said Ambrose Jennings in a frail voice,
"Enid Blunt, a Turkish refugee from Smyrna who writes quite decent
verse, Thapoulos, Penitence Murray, who is just out of prison, and Smith
the sculptor, with his mistress, a round-faced little Russian girl.
She's the dearest little Bolshevik I know."

He looked plaintively yet critically at Lady Sellingworth, and pulled
his little black beard with fingers covered with antique rings.

"Dear little bloodthirsty thing!" he added to Lady Sellingworth. "You
would like her. I know it."

"I'm sure I should. There is something so alluring about Bolshevism when
it's safely tucked up at the Cafe Royal. But I will only walk to the
door."

"And then Mr. Craven will get you a taxi," said Miss Van Tuyn. "Shall we
go?"

They fared forth into the London night--Craven last.

He realized that Miss Van Tuyn had made up her mind to keep both him
and Jennings as her possessions of the evening, and to send Lady
Selli