His fellow-diners seemed curiously to have degenerated, to have grown still narrower in their sympathies, still more careless in their eating, still more peculiar or shabbier in their dress. The young women of masculine aspect set their elbows on the table more uncompromisingly than ever, and the young men with soiled wristbands or no wristbands at all were more than ever tedious in their murmured conversations. It was, indeed, a bizarre company that surrounded him! Then he reflected that these people had not altered. The change was in himself. He had outgrown them; he surveyed them now as from a tower. He was a man with a future, using this restaurant because it suited him temporarily to do so, while they would use it till the end, never deviating, never leaving the rut.
"So you have come at last!" Miss Roberts said to him when he presented his check. "I was beginning to think you had deserted us."
"But it's barely a week since I saw you," he protested. "Let me wish you a happy New Year."
"The same to you." She flushed a little, and then: "What do you think of our new decorations? Aren't they pretty?"
He praised them perfunctorily, even without glancing round. His eyes were on her face. He remembered the reiterated insinuations of Jenkins, and wondered whether they had any ground of fact.
"By the way, has Jenkins been here to-day?" he inquired, by way of introducing the name.
"Is that the young man who used to come with you sometimes? No."
There was no trace of self-consciousness in her bearing, and Richard resolved to handle Jenkins with severity. Another customer approached the pay-desk.
"Good afternoon." Her gaze rested on him softly. "I suppose you'll be here again _some_ time." She spoke low, so that the other customer should not hear.
"I'm coming every day now, I think," he answered in the same tone, with a smothered laugh. "Ta-ta."
That night at half-past seven he began his novel. The opening chapter was introductory, and the words came without much effort. This being only a draft, there was no need for polish; so that when a sentence refused to run smoothly at the first trial, he was content to make it grammatical and leave it. He seemed to have been working for hours when a desire took him to count up what was already written. Six hundred words! He sighed the sigh of satisfaction, and looked at his watch, to find that it was exactly half-past eight. The discovery somewhat damped his felicity. He began to doubt whether stuff composed at the rate of ten words a minute could have any real value. Pooh! Sometimes one wrote quickly, and sometimes slowly. The number of minutes occupied was no index of quality. Should he continue writing? Yes, he would.... No.... Why should he? He had performed the task self-allotted for the day, and more; and now he was entitled to rest. True, the actual time of labour had been very short; but then, another day the same amount of work might consume three or four hours. He put away his writing-things, and searched about for something to read, finally lighting on "Paradise Lost." But "Paradise Lost" wanted actuality. He laid it aside. Was there any valid reason why he should not conclude the evening at the theatre? None. The frost had returned with power, and the reverberation of the streets sounded invitingly through his curtained windows. He went out, and walked briskly up Park Side. At Hyde Park Corner he jumped on an omnibus.