The situation, humiliating before, was now appalling.  Two entirely correct young gentlemen, in evening dress, with light overcoats and opera hats, struggling with a refractory car that in its obstinacy was far more dignified than themselves—­and the car obstructing traffic at the very centre of the world in the very hour when the elect of Britain were driving by on the way to Tristan at the Opera!  Sebastians both, they were martyrized by the poisoned arrows of vulgar wit, shot at them from all sides and especially from the lofty thrones of hansom-cab drivers.  The policeman ordered them to shove the car to the kerb, and with the aid of a boy and the policeman himself they did so, opposite the shuttered front of Swan & Edgar’s.

The two experts then examined the engine in a professional manner; they did everything but take it down; they tried in vain all known devices to conquer the recalcitrancy of engines; and when they had reached despair and fury George, startlingly visited by an idea, demanded: 

“Any petrol in the tank?...”  In those days men of fashion were apt to forget, at moments of crisis, that the first necessity of the engine was petrol.  George behaved magnanimously.  He might have extinguished Lucas with a single inflection as Lucas, shamed to the uttermost, poured a spare half-tin of petrol into the tank.  He refrained.

In one minute, in less than one minute, they were at the side entrance to the Cafe Royal, which less than a minute earlier had been inconceivably distant and unattainable.  Lucas dashed first into the restaurant.  To keep ladies waiting in a public place was for him the very worst crime, surpassing in turpitude arson, embezzlement, and the murder of innocents.  The ladies must have been waiting for a quarter of an hour, half an hour!  His reputation was destroyed!

However, the ladies had not arrived.

“That’s all right,” Lucas breathed, at ease at last.  The terrible scowl had vanished from his face, which was perfectly recomposed into its urbane, bland charm.

“Now perhaps you’ll inform me who they are, old man,” George suggested, relinquishing his overcoat to a flunkey, and following Lucas into the cloister set apart for the cleansing of hands which have meddled with machinery.

“The Wheeler woman is one—­didn’t I tell you?” Lucas answered, unsuccessfully concealing his pride.

“Wheeler?”

“Irene Wheeler.  You know.”

George was really impressed.  Lucas had hitherto said no word as to his acquaintance with this celebrated woman.  It was true that recently Lucas had been spreading himself in various ways—­he had even passed his Intermediate—­but George had not anticipated such a height of achievement as the feat of entertaining at a restaurant a cynosure like Irene Wheeler.  George had expected quite another sort of company at dinner, for he had publicly dined with Lucas before.  All day he had been