r as she plodded on, so
that it was with a feeling of relief that she espied "Cuisine
Francaise" written across the window of a fairly clean-looking
restaurant in a small street, into which place she turned, to be
confronted by a fat, oily individual hailing from the Levant, who
looked as though his business was anything but that of the kitchen.

Unsophisticated Jill, however, saw nothing wrong in the person who
bowed, and smiled, and rubbed the palms of his hands in a rotary
movement; and being taken up in trying to amalgamate the scantiness of
her money, the prices on the carte, and the enormity of her hunger,
neither did she notice the burning eyes in the handsome, sensual dark
face of a middle-aged native fixed upon her hungrily from behind a
half-open door, where he had been hurriedly summoned by the man who
advertised his skill in "_la cuisine Francaise_."

To pass away the time Jill lingered over her meal until she was alone
in the place save for the waiter, who was aching to get away to smoke a
cigarette, and the native who had noiselessly entered and slipped into
a seat in the far corner.

Once Jill, inadvertently looking straight into his eyes, and hurriedly
looking away, had picked up a paper lying on the chair beside her;
glanced at the first page, and dropped it like a hot plate, whilst a
wave of scorching red rushed over her neck and face.

"Allah!" she thought, "what an awful place, and what on earth am I to
do with two shillings in my pocket, and not a cinema handy!" And
feeling the native's eyes still fixed on her, she beckoned to the
waiter, paid her bill, and once out in the street turned sharply up the
first on the right just as the native and the Levantine came to the
restaurant door in time to see the last inch of her disappearing skirt.
And yet through all her haste and her annoyance the inner membrane of
Jill's mind, that delicate fabric woven of intuition and divination,
which gives women the pull on so many occasions, and on certain courses
get her past the post lengths ahead of man, whispered to her that it
had not failed her earlier in the day, and that if she could but stick
out the next few hours she would find a sure reward for her present
distress.

But she stopped short and clicked her teeth angrily when she met the
native of the restaurant face to face in a narrow street, and turned
and walked in the opposite direction as quickly as her dignity would
allow.

But after the same