There were several motor-cars outside.  G.J. signalled across the street to the taxi-man who telephoned every morning to him for orders.  He had never owned a motor-car, and, because he had no ambition to drive himself, had never felt the desire to own one.  The taxi-man experienced some delay in starting his engine.  G.J. lit a cigarette.  Concepcion came out, alone.  He had expected her to be with the Marquis, with whom she had arrived.  She was dressed in mourning.  Only on that day, and once before—­on the day of her husband’s funeral—­had he seen her in mourning.  She looked now like the widow she was.

Nevertheless, he had not quite accustomed himself to the sight of her in mourning.

“I wonder whether I can get a taxi?” she asked.

“You can have mine,” said he.  “Where do you want to go?”

She named a disconcerting address near Shepherd’s Market.

At that moment a Pressman with a camera came boldly up and snapped her.  The man had the brazen demeanour of a racecourse tout.  But Concepcion seemed not to mind at all, and G.J. remembered that she was deeply inured to publicity.  Her portrait had already appeared in the picture papers along with that of Queen, but the papers had deemed it necessary to remind a forgetful public that Mrs. Carlos Smith was the same lady as the super-celebrated Concepcion Iquist.  The taxi-man hesitated for an instant on hearing the address, but only for an instant.  He had earned the esteem and regular patronage of G.J. by a curious hazard.  One night G.J. had hailed him, and the man had said in a flash, without waiting for the fare to speak, “The Albany, isn’t it, sir?  I drove you home about two months ago.”  Thenceforward he had been for G.J. the perfect taxi-man.

In the taxi Concepcion said not a word, and G.J. did not disturb her.  Beneath his superficial melancholy he was sustained by the mere joy of being alive.  The common phenomena of the streets were beautiful to him.  Concepcion’s calm and grieved vitality seemed mysteriously exquisite.  He had had similar sensations while walking along Coventry Street after his escape from the explosion of the bomb.  Fatigue and annoyance and sorrow had extinguished them for a time, but now that the episode of Queen’s tragedy was closed they were born anew.  Queen, the pathetic victim of the indiscipline of her own impulses, was gone.  But he had escaped.  He lived.  And life was an affair miraculous and lovely.

“I think I’ve been here before,” said he, when they got out of the taxi in a short, untidy, indeterminate street that was a cul-de-sac.  The prospect ended in a garage, near which two women chauffeurs were discussing a topic that interested them.  A hurdy-gurdy was playing close by, and a few ragged children stared at the hurdy-gurdy, on the end of which a baby was cradled.  The fact that the street was midway between Curzon Street and Piccadilly, and almost within sight of the monumental new mansion of an American duchess, explained the existence of the building in front of which the taxi had stopped.  The entrance to the flats was mean and soiled.  It repelled, but Concepcion unapologetically led G.J. up a flight of four stone steps and round a curve into a little corridor.  She halted at a door on the ground floor.