He allowed a couple of minutes to go by before he entered the restaurant; then he pushed open the doors and his eyes took in the room with a swift scrutiny.

Everything was in his favour.  She was seated at a table in the corner of the room, herself the only occupant of it.  He walked across to her without hesitation—­no timidity now.  That had vanished with the need for a show of determination.  Here he must dominate the situation or fail utterly.

“There’s no need to move to another table,” he said as he pulled out a chair for himself and sat down opposite to her.  “If you really strongly object to my having my lunch opposite to you, I’ll move away.”

“I do object,” she replied.

“But why?”

“I don’t know you, I don’t know who you are.”

“That’s not a great difficulty,” he said, smiling.

“I think it is.”

He laughed lightly.  “Not a bit of it.  It can easily be overcome.  My name’s Traill.  I’m a barrister—­briefless—­the type of barrister that populates the Temple and all those places.  One of these days I may come into my own; I may be conducting the leading cases at the criminal bar; I may be—­but it’s not even one of my castles in the air.”

She smiled at his inconsequence.  “You seem to take it very lightly,” she remarked.

“Why not?  Do you imagine I sit in chambers all day long, pining for the impossible which no alchemy of fate can apparently ever alter?  I’m also a journalist.  That’s why I’ve come to see you.”  He spoke utterly at random.

“To see me?”

“Yes.”

The waitress was standing impatiently by the table, tapping her tray with her fingers.

“What are you going to have?” he asked.

Sally snatched a swift glance at him.  Was he conscious that he was overruling her objections?  She saw no sign of it.  He looked up at her questioningly, waiting for her answer.

“I don’t mind at all,” she replied.  She felt too timid to say what she would really like, too ashamed perhaps to say what she usually had for her lunch.  The best course was to let him choose.  “I’ll have whatever you do,” she said agreeably.

He gave the order, a meal for which she could never have afforded to pay.  Then he turned back with a humorous smile to her.

“The objection, the difficulty’s overcome, then,” he said.

Sally allowed herself to smile, eyes in a swift moment raised to his.

“I never said so.”

“No, no; but surely this is tacit admission.  However, the point is not the saying of it.”  He saw the look of doubtfulness beginning to show itself in her eyes.  “What’s the good of talking about it?  We’re here for the purpose of eating, not discussing social conventions.  You know who I am, I shall know who you are in another two or three minutes if you’ll be kind enough to tell me.  Why, good heavens! life’s short enough, without surrounding everything we want with