"If I loved a man," said Jenny, "I should be most shocking jealous."
"What would you do if you met him with another girl?" asked Maurice.
"Foolish or not, that's what I should do."
"Well, I'm not jealous," vowed Maurice. "I never have been."
"Then you're silly," asserted Jenny. "Jealous! I'm terribly jealous."
"It's a mistake," said Maurice. "It spoils everything and turns a pleasure into a nuisance."
"I don't think I'm jealous of you-know-who," put in Irene.
"Oh, him and you, you're both mad!" exclaimed Jenny. "But if ever I love a man----"
Two Frenchmen at the next table were shuffling the dominoes. For Maurice the noise had a strange significance, while he waited for the hypothesis.
"Well?" said he. Somebody knocked over a glass. Jenny shivered.
"What about driving home?" asked Maurice.
Outside it was pouring. They squeezed into a hansom cab. Again his politeness seemed bound to mar the evening.
"Let's see. Irene lives at Camden Town. We'd better drive to Islington first and leave Jenny, eh?"
Then Jenny said quite unaccountably to herself and Irene:
"No, thanks. We'll drive Irene home first."
Maurice looked at her quickly, but she gave no sign of any plan, nor did she betray a hint of the emotion he would have been glad to see.
With the glass let down against the rain, they were forced very near to one another as the horse trotted along Tottenham Court Road shining with puddles in the lamplight.
"This is jolly," said Maurice, bravely putting an arm round each waist and holding Irene a little closer for fear she should feel that she was the undesired third person. Having done this, he felt entitled to kiss Jenny first and turned towards her lips. She drew back, whispering:
Then, since he had offered to kiss Jenny, he felt bound to kiss Irene. The latter allowed the compliment as she would have let him pick up a handkerchief. Arrangements were made to meet again on the morrow at the same place, and at last the cab was pulled up some two hundred yards from Irene's house. Maurice jumped out and shook hands very politely and waved to her as she ran up a side-street. Then he sat back beside Jenny in the cab. The driver turned his horse and for a minute or two they traveled silently through the rain and lamplight.