Helen and Aubrey chuckled at this innocent correlation of ideas.  Then the organ began to play “O How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning” and the ever-delightful Mr. and Mrs. Drew appeared on the screen in one of their domestic comedies.  Lovers of the movies may well date a new screen era from the day those whimsical pantomimers set their wholesome and humane talent at the service of the arc light and the lens.  Aubrey felt a serene and intimate pleasure in watching them from a seat beside Titania.  He knew that the breakfast table scene shadowed before them was only a makeshift section of lath propped up in some barnlike motion picture studio; yet his rocketing fancy imagined it as some arcadian suburb where he and Titania, by a jugglery of benign fate, were bungalowed together.  Young men have a pioneering imagination:  it is doubtful whether any young Orlando ever found himself side by side with Rosalind without dreaming himself wedded to her.  If men die a thousand deaths before this mortal coil is shuffled, even so surely do youths contract a thousand marriages before they go to the City Hall for a license.

Aubrey remembered the opera glasses, which were still in his pocket, and brought them out.  The trio amused themselves by watching Sidney Drew’s face through the magnifying lenses.  They were disappointed in the result, however, as the pictures, when so enlarged, revealed all the cobweb of fine cracks on the film.  Mr. Drew’s nose, the most amusing feature known to the movies, lost its quaintness when so augmented.

“Why,” cried Titania, “it makes his lovely nose look like the map of Florida.”

“How on earth did you happen to have these in your pocket?” asked Mrs. Mifflin, returning the glasses.

Aubrey was hard pressed for a prompt and reasonable fib, but advertising men are resourceful.

“Oh,” he said, “I sometimes carry them with me at night to study the advertising sky-signs.  I’m a little short sighted.  You see, it’s part of my business to study the technique of the electric signs.”

After some current event pictures the programme prepared to repeat itself, and they went out.  “Will you come in and have some cocoa with us?” said Helen as they reached the door of the bookshop.  Aubrey was eager enough to accept, but feared to overplay his hand.  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think I’d better not.  I’ve got some work to do to-night.  Perhaps I can drop in on Monday when Mr. Mifflin’s away, and put coal on the furnace for you, or something of that sort?”

Mrs. Mifflin laughed.  “Surely!” she said.  “You’re welcome any time.”  The door closed behind them, and Aubrey fell into a profound melancholy.  Deprived of the heavenly rhetoric of her eye, Gissing Street seemed flat and dull.