dinner
he had eaten that he felt a kind of grief--and they greeted him with a
surprise so seemingly genuine that he thought with sudden suspicion: 'I
believe they knew I was here all the time.' He gave Annette a look
furtive and searching. So pretty, seemingly so candid; could she be
angling for him? He turned to Madame Lamotte and said:

"I've been dining here."

Really! If she had only known! There were dishes she could have
recommended; what a pity! Soames was confirmed in his suspicion. 'I must
look out what I'm doing!' he thought sharply.

"Another little cup of very special coffee, monsieur; a liqueur, Grand
Marnier?" and Madame Lamotte rose to order these delicacies.

Alone with Annette Soames said, "Well, Annette?" with a defensive little
smile about his lips.

The girl blushed. This, which last Sunday would have set his nerves
tingling, now gave him much the same feeling a man has when a dog that he
owns wriggles and looks at him. He had a curious sense of power, as if
he could have said to her, 'Come and kiss me,' and she would have come.
And yet--it was strange--but there seemed another face and form in the
room too; and the itch in his nerves, was it for that--or for this? He
jerked his head towards the restaurant and said: "You have some queer
customers. Do you like this life?"

Annette looked up at him for a moment, looked down, and played with her
fork.

"No," she said, "I do not like it."

'I've got her,' thought Soames, 'if I want her. But do I want her?' She
was graceful, she was pretty--very pretty; she was fresh, she had taste
of a kind. His eyes travelled round the little room; but the eyes of his
mind went another journey--a half-light, and silvery walls, a satinwood
piano, a woman standing against it, reined back as it were from him--a
woman with white shoulders that he knew, and dark eyes that he had sought
to know, and hair like dull dark amber. And as in an artist who strives
for the unrealisable and is ever thirsty, so there rose in him at that
moment the thirst of the old passion he had never satisfied.

"Well," he said calmly, "you're young. There's everything before you."

Annette shook her head.

"I think sometimes there is nothing before me but hard work. I am not so
in love with work as mother."

"Your mother is a wonder," said Soames, faintly mocking; "she will never
let failure lodge in her house."

Annette sighed. "It must be wonderful to be rich."