soup Beresford chafed at British insular prejudice. What good had the war done if it had not broken down this foolish barrier? Here were two people alone in an inn-parlour, yet they were doomed to dine at separate tables. He was piqued, too, at the girl's obvious indifference to his presence, a fact of which he had assured himself by surreptitious glances in her direction.
As the meal progressed, he became more and more incensed at her supremely unreasonable attitude. What right had she to consign him to a dull and tedious dinner? Surely the day had been a miserable enough affair without this totally unnecessary insistence of mid-Victorian prejudice and the segregation of the sexes. It was absurd, provincial, suburban, parochial, in fact it was most damnably irritating, he decided.
What would she do when the meal was over? Draw up to the fire, go to the smoking-room, or clear off to bed? Could he not do something to precipitate a crisis? But what? If he were a woman he might faint; but he could not call to mind ever having read of a hero of romance who fainted, even for the purpose of making the heroine's acquaintance. He might choke, be seized with a convulsion, develop signs of insanity. What would she do then, this self-possessed young woman? Ring for the waiter most likely.
Gradually there became engendered in his mind a dull resentment at her attitude of splendid isolation. She evidently preferred solitude, enjoyed it
