“What was it all about?  What did they all come for? I came because she made me.  But why did the others come?”

The lunch had passed like a mild nightmare, and he felt as though, with the inconsequence of dream-people, these people had gone away without having accomplished some essential act which had been the object of their gathering.

IV

When George came out of the front door, he beheld Miss Ingram on the kerb, in the act of getting into a very rich fur coat.  A chauffeur, in a very rich livery, was deferentially helping her.  Behind them stretched a long, open motor-car.  This car, existing as it did at a time when the public acutely felt that automobiles splashed respectable foot-farers with arrogant mud and rendered unbearable the lives of the humble in village streets, was of the immodest kind described, abusively, as ‘powerful and luxurious.’  The car of course drew attention, because it had yet occurred to but few of anybody’s friends that they might themselves possess even a modest car, much less an immodest one.  George had not hitherto personally known a single motor-car owner.

But what struck him even more than the car was the fur coat, and the haughty and fastidious manner in which Miss Ingram accepted it from the chauffeur, and the disdainful, accustomed way in which she wore it—­as though it were a cheap rag—­when once it was on her back.  In her gestures he glimpsed a new world.  He had been secretly scorning the affairs of the luncheon and all that it implied, and he had been secretly scorning himself for his pitiful lack of brilliancy at the luncheon.  These two somewhat contradictory sentiments were suddenly shrivelled in the fire of his ambition which had flared up anew at contact with a spark.  And the spark was the sight of the girl’s costly fur coat.  He must have a costly fur coat, and a girl in it, and the girl must treat the fur coat like a cheap rag.  Otherwise he would die a disappointed man.

“Hallo!” called Miss Ingram.

“Hallo!” She had climbed into the car, and turned her head to look at him.  He saw that she was younger even than he had thought.  She seemed quite mature when she was still, but when she moved she had the lithe motions of immaturity.  As a boy, he now infallibly recognized a girl.

“Which way are you going?”

“Well—­Chelsea more or less.”

“I’ll give you a lift.”

He ought to have said:  “Are you sure I shan’t be taking you out of your way?” But he said merely:  “Oh!  Thanks awfully!”

The chauffeur held the door for him, and then arranged a fur rug over the knees of the boy and the girl.  To be in the car gave George intense pleasure, especially when the contrivance thrilled into life and began to travel.  He was thankful that his clothes were as smart as they ought to be.  She could not think ill of his clothes—­no matter who her friends were.