The Tempting of Tavernake | Page 6

invincible qualities under an exterior
absolutely commonplace.
"Are you as persistent about everything in life?" she asked him.
"Why not?" he replied. "I try always to be consistent."
"What is your name?"
"Leonard Tavernake," he answered, promptly.
"Are you well off--I mean moderately well off?"
"I have a quite sufficient income."
"Have you any one dependent upon you?"
"Not a soul," he declared. "I am my own master in every sense of the
word."
She laughed in an odd sort of way.
"Then you shall pay for your persistence," she said, ---"I mean that I
may as well rob you of a sovereign as the restaurant people."
"You must tell me now where you would like to go to," he insisted. "It
is getting late."
"I do not like these foreign places," she replied. "I should prefer to go
to the grill-room of a good restaurant."
"We will take a taxicab," he announced. "You have no objection?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"If you have the money and don't mind spending it," she said, "I will
admit that I have had all the walking I want. Besides, the toe of my

boot is worn through and I find it painful. Yesterday I tramped ten
miles trying to find a man who was getting up a concert party for the
provinces."
"And did you find him?" he asked, hailing a cab.
"Yes, I found him," she answered, indifferently. "We went through the
usual programme. He heard me sing, tried to kiss me and promised to
let me know. Nobody ever refuses anything in my profession, you see.
They promise to let you know."
"Are you a singer, then, or an actress?"
"I am neither," she told him. "I said 'my profession' because it is the
only one to which I have ever tried to belong. I have never succeeded in
obtaining an engagement in this country. I do not suppose that even if I
had persevered I should ever have had one."
"You have given up the idea, then," he remarked.
"I have given it up," she admitted, a little curtly. "Please do not think,
because I am allowing you to be my companion for a short time, that
you may ask me questions. How fast these taxies go!"
They drew up at their destination--a well-known restaurant in Regent
Street. He paid the cabman and they descended a flight of stairs into the
grill-room.
"I hope that this place will suit you," he said. "I have not much
experience of restaurants."
She looked around and nodded.
"Yes," she replied, "I think that it will do."
She was very shabbily dressed, and he, although his appearance was by
no means ordinary, was certainly not of the type which inspires
immediate respect in even the grill-room of a fashionable restaurant.
Nevertheless, they received prompt and almost ofcious service.

Tavernake, as he watched his companion's air, her manner of seating
herself and accepting the attentions of the head waiter, felt that
nameless impulse which was responsible for his having followed her
from Blenheim House and which he could only call curiosity,
becoming stronger. An exceedingly matter-of-fact person, he was also
by instinct and habit observant. He never doubted but that she belonged
to a class of society from which the guests at the boarding-house where
they had both lived were seldom recruited, and of which he himself
knew little. He was not in the least a snob, this young man, but he
found the fact interesting. Life with him was already very much the
same as a ledger account--a matter of debits and credits, and he had
never failed to include among the latter that curious gift of breeding for
which he himself, denied it by heritage, had somehow substituted a
complete and exceedingly rare naturalness.
"I should like," she announced, laying down the carte, "a fried sole,
some cutlets, an ice, and black coffee."
The waiter bowed.
"And for Monsieur?"
Tavernake glanced at his watch; it was already ten o'clock.
"I will take the same," he declared.
"And to drink?"
She seemed indifferent.
"Any light wine," she answered, carelessly, "white or red."
Tavernake took up the wine list and ordered sauterne. They were left
alone in their corner for a few minutes, almost the only occupants of
the place.
"You are sure that you can afford this?" she asked, looking at him
critically. "It may cost you a sovereign or thirty shillings."

He studied the prices on the menu.
"I can afford it quite well and I have plenty of money with me," he
assured her, "but I do not think that it will cost more than eighteen
shillings. While we are waiting for the sole, shall we talk? I can tell you,
if you choose to hear, why I followed you from the boardinghouse."
"I don't