it was that they were meeting on neutral ground to-night, or
whether the carelessness of an old grey coat that Denham wore gave an
ease to his bearing that he lacked in conventional dress, Katharine
certainly felt no impulse to consider him outside the particular set in
which she lived.

"In what sense are you my inferior?" she asked, looking at him gravely,
as though honestly searching for his meaning. The look gave him great
pleasure. For the first time he felt himself on perfectly equal terms
with a woman whom he wished to think well of him, although he could
not have explained why her opinion of him mattered one way or another.
Perhaps, after all, he only wanted to have something of her to take home
to think about. But he was not destined to profit by his advantage.

"I don't think I understand what you mean," Katharine repeated, and then
she was obliged to stop and answer some one who wished to know whether
she would buy a ticket for an opera from them, at a reduction. Indeed,
the temper of the meeting was now unfavorable to separate conversation;
it had become rather debauched and hilarious, and people who scarcely
knew each other were making use of Christian names with apparent
cordiality, and had reached that kind of gay tolerance and general
friendliness which human beings in England only attain after sitting
together for three hours or so, and the first cold blast in the air
of the street freezes them into isolation once more. Cloaks were being
flung round the shoulders, hats swiftly pinned to the head; and Denham
had the mortification of seeing Katharine helped to prepare herself by
the ridiculous Rodney. It was not the convention of the meeting to say
good-bye, or necessarily even to nod to the person with whom one was
talking; but, nevertheless, Denham was disappointed by the completeness
with which Katharine parted from him, without any attempt to finish her
sentence. She left with Rodney.

CHAPTER V

Denham had no conscious intention of following Katharine, but, seeing
her depart, he took his hat and ran rather more quickly down the stairs
than he would have done if Katharine had not been in front of him. He
overtook a friend of his, by name Harry Sandys, who was going the same
way, and they walked together a few paces behind Katharine and Rodney.

The night was very still, and on such nights, when the traffic thins
away, the walker becomes conscious of the moon in the street, as if the
curtains