“Then what earthly excuse have you for being unhappy?”
There was no taxi to be found in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, and after a fruitless walk down the Strand they struck across the Park. At the corner of Buckingham Palace an officer in an open car, with a girl beside him, leaning on his shoulder, passed them and turned with a jerk of the head to look a second time and to wave his hand.
“Was that intended for me, do you suppose?” Eric asked. “My eyes aren’t good enough—”
Though her voice was dispassionate enough, Eric fancied that he had felt her hand dragging against his arm.
“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” he murmured.
“Nor have I... He lives in Buckingham Gate... Rather a nice flat,” she explained jerkily.
Eric was vaguely disquieted at seeing Gaymer, as though not to see him were to bring his existence to an end. The moment’s glimpse had disturbed Ivy as much as his own meeting with Barbara. She spoke hurriedly, with unconcern too elaborate to be convincing; unconsciously she quickened her pace. And Eric would have wagered a year’s income that Ivy’s unhappiness was linked with Gaymer’s treatment of her.
“I wonder whether we shall get a taxi at Victoria,” she murmured as though she knew and wanted to interrupt his thoughts.
“I certainly don’t want to walk home from Eaton Place.”
It was distasteful to suspect a man, when there was no basis for suspicion, but Eric felt that Gaymer was not to be trusted. That conceded, it was plausible to imagine that Ivy had fallen in love with him and that he had tried to exploit her devotion for his own amusement. Either he had misjudged the character of his quarry or else he was waiting for her to come to her senses. Eric remembered his glimpse of the girl in the car, lolling back with her head on Gaymer’s shoulder: it was a reasonable guess that Ivy had drifted without seeing where he was leading her and had pulled herself up in time to administer an unexpected rebuff....
Eric was startled out of his reverie when she drew her arm out of his and waved to a taxi.
“Don’t come any farther with me!,” she begged. “It was simply sweet of you to toil right out of your way like this.”
“But I’ll drop you in Eaton Place and take the taxi on.” It was the most obvious and comfortable arrangement for both. As she hesitated to accept it, Eric became suddenly suspicious that she wanted to get rid of him and to be alone. The sight of Gaymer with another woman had hurt her until she had to cry—and to cry where no one would see her. As she stood with set face and eyes averted, against the immense gloomy background of the palace, with the wind blowing through her hair and snatching at her cloak, she seemed even more fragile and forlorn than on the night when she had begged him to come home with her from the theatre.