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He decided to go and have a look at the Capitol, and a look at the Plaza, and choose which to go to after he had had his meal at the Corner House. This he now did, and decided on the Plaza.
    But even after this it was still a little too early to go and eat, and anyway the streets were far too fascinating to leave. He again entered Wardour Street, and walked up towards Shaftesbury Avenue.
    Bob was always diverted by Wardour Street, because it was the principal resort of the women of the town. To him, as with most young men, of whatever class, the poisonous horror of their bearing yet bore the glamour and beauty of the macabre, even if he prided himself that he was superior to adventure of this kind. Or rather that he had now finished with adventure of this kind; for Bob had been to sea, and his behaviour had been neither eccentric nor snobbish in foreign ports.
    This evening, too, passing these women and girls, as they lurked solitary in shop doorways, or aimlessly crossed the road, or came down the street in couples absorbed by that frantic garrulity and backbiting which rend their kind – this evening, remembering yesterday evening, and the chivalrous episode it contained, he experienced a new interest.
    Indeed, his mood of vaingloriousness transferred itself to this. He again felt glowingly different from other men – and particularly those, of course, whom he now saw lingering in search of those contacts towards which he himself had adopted so austere and magnificent an attitude.
    In fact, before long a bemused Bob had reached a phase of overweening spiritual swagger such as is granted to despairing humans seldom, and he had just bought a paper, and was strolling along Shaftesbury Avenue again, when he saw, coming in his direction, and on his side of the pavement, two of these women; in one of whom he thought he recognized the girl herself.
    A few paces revealed that this was so. He was at once too flustered to know whether he intended to speak to her; and she, talking to her friend, did not notice him until he had nearly passed. But suddenly her face lit into a smile and she stopped.
    ‘Hullo! – how are you ?’ she said, and offered her hand.
    ‘Hullo!’ he said, and smiled down upon her.
    Her friend (it was a different friend from that of last night) moved on tactfully and looked in a shop window about five yards away.
    ‘What’re you doin’ up this end?’ she asked. She seemed very cheerful.
    ‘Oh – just strollin’.’
    ‘Well – come and have a drink with me.’
    ‘Right you are. Where shall we go?’
    ‘Good night, Bet,’ she cried.
    ‘Good night, Jen!’ returned her friend, and moved away.
    They were walking together towards Piccadilly. He looked at her face. He was profoundly impressed by her prettiness and smartness of attire. She really didn’t look like one. Hesaw people looking at them – rather enviously, it seemed to him. His entire evening was altered. He was enjoying himself tremendously.

C HAPTER XI
    ‘I’ M GLAD I met you to-night,’ she said.
    ‘Oh – why’s that?’ But he knew the answer. ‘So’s I can give you back that money what you gave me,’ she said.
    His spirits expanded. ‘Oh no. That’s forgotten. How’d you get on when I left you?’
    ‘Fine, thanks,’ she said, briefly and cheerfully.
    For a moment he was a little thrown out by this unsentimental retort. Also by the way in which she had gaily slid over the fact that he had (with his ‘That’s forgotten’) just presented her with the money. After all, it was ten shillings gone west. In his next remark he sought to connect with her again, to reinstate himself once more as her hero.
    ‘Were you coming back, as you said you were?’
    ‘Sure,’ she said with a continued airiness of manner which considerably piqued him. But he would not give in.
    ‘I bet you weren’t,’ he said, chaffingly.
    ‘ Sure ,’ she said. ‘I was .’ And she met his eyes as much as to ask him what it was all about.
    He had