Chapter VIII

The girl was sitting at a large table in a corner of the restaurant, and he saw with joy that there was a vacant seat immediately opposite to her. He looked at her as he sat down, but she gave no sign of recognition. He had hoped that their encounter earlier in the day would have entitled him to a smile from her, but her features remained unrelaxed, although he knew that she was aware of him and remembered him. Her eyes and his had met, and he had been ready to answer her smile with another smile, but she averted her eyes from his stare and looked down at her plate. What eyes she had ... grey at one moment and blue at another as her face turned in the light! When she looked downwards, he could see long lashes fringing her eyelids, and when she looked up, the changing colour of her irises and the blue tinge that suffused the cornea, caused him to think of her eyes as pools of light. Her face was pale, and in repose it had an appearance of puzzled pathos that made him feel that he must instantly offer comfort to her, and he would have done so had not her nervous reticence prevented him. What would she do if he were to speak to her? There was an illustrated paper lying close to her plate. He leant across the table and, pointing to the paper, said, "Are you using that?"

She started, and then, without a smile, said, "No," and passed the paper to him.

"Thank you!" he murmured, taking it from her.

It was an old paper, and he did not wish to read it, but he had to pretend to be interested in it, for the girl showed no desire to offer any more than the casual civilities of one stranger to another. He hoped that he might suddenly look up and find that she was regarding him intently ... she would hurriedly glance away from him with an air of pretty confusion ... but although he looked up at her many times, he never caught her gazing at him. He wished that she would take her hat, a wide-brimmed one, off so that he might see her hair. How ridiculous it was of women to sit at meals with hats on!... He could just see a wave of dark brown hair under the brim of her hat, flowing across her broad brow. Her eyebrows were dark and level and very firm, and he thought how wonderfully the darkness of her eyebrows and her eyelids and the pallor of her skin served to enrich the beauty of her eyes. Maggie Carmichael's eyes had had laughter in them ... they seemed always to be sparkling with merriment ... but this girl's eyes had tears in them. She might often smile, John told himself, but she would seldom laugh. Her air of listening for an alarm and the nervous movement of her fingers made him imagine that a magician had changed some swift and beautiful and timid animal into a woman. The magicians in the _Arabian Nights_ frequently turned men and women into hounds and antelopes, but the process had been reversed with this girl: an antelope had been turned into a woman.... If only she would give him an opportunity of speaking to her, of making friends with her! He suddenly held out the paper to her. "Thank you!" he said.

"It isn't mine," she answered indifferently.

He became confused and clumsy, and he put the paper down on the table so that it upset a spoon on to the floor with a noise that seemed loud enough to wake the dead; and as he stooped to pick it up, he pushed the paper against her plate, causing it almost to fall into her lap.

"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed.

"It's all right," she replied coldly.

He could feel the blood running hotly through his body, and the warm flush of it spreading over his cheeks. "That was a cut," he said to himself, and wondered what he should do or say next. What a fool he must appear to her! ... It would be ridiculous to ask her to tell him the time, for there was a large and palpable clock over her head so fixed that he could not fail to see it. It was very odd, he thought, that she should not wish to speak to him when he so ardently wished to speak to her. She had finished her meal and he knew that in a moment or two she would rise and go out of the restaurant. He leant across the table.

"Miss Moore," he said, "I wish you would be friends with me!"

She looked at him as if she were not certain that he had spoken to her, and as she saw how earnestly he gazed at her, the expression of her face changed from one of astonishment to one of alarm.

"Won't you?" he said.

She gave a little gasp and rose hurriedly from her seat.

"Miss Moore!" he said appealingly.

"I don't know you," she replied, hurrying away.

He sat still. It seemed to him that every person in the restaurant must be looking at him and condemning him for his behaviour. He had spoken to a girl who did not know him, and he had frightened her. The look of alarm in her face was unmistakable. What must she think of him? Would she ever believe that he had no wish to frighten her, that he wished only to be her friend, to talk to her? If he had told her that he did not know anyone in London and was feeling miserably lonely, perhaps she would have been kind to him ... but what opportunity had he had to tell her anything. Well, that was the end of that! He was not likely to see Eleanor Moore again, and even if he were, he could hardly hope, after such a rebuff, to win her friendship unless a miracle were to happen ... and he had begun to feel dubious about miracles since he had arrived in London. Perhaps, if he were to follow her and explain matters to her!...

He hurried out of the restaurant, and stood for a moment or two on the pavement glancing up and down the street. She was turning out of the lane into Queen Victoria Street, and as he stood looking at her, she turned round the corner and he lost sight of her.

"I'll go after her," he said.