Suddenly his heart gave a great thud.
"There you are.
I thought you were never coming."
"I like that after keeping me waiting all this time.
I had half a mind to go back home again."
"But you said you'd come to the second-class waiting-room."
"I didn't say any such thing.
It isn't exactly likely I'd sit in the second-class room when I could sit in the first is it?"
Though Philip was sure he had not made a mistake, he said nothing, and they got into a cab.
"Where are we dining?" she asked.
"I thought of the Adelphi Restaurant.
Will that suit you?"
"I don't mind where we dine."
She spoke ungraciously.
She was put out by being kept waiting and answered Philip's attempt at conversation with monosyllables.
She wore a long cloak of some rough, dark material and a crochet shawl over her head.
They reached the restaurant and sat down at a table.
She looked round with satisfaction.
The red shades to the candles on the tables, the gold of the decorations, the looking-glasses, lent the room a sumptuous air.
"I've never been here before."
She gave Philip a smile.
She had taken off her cloak; and he saw that she wore a pale blue dress, cut square at the neck; and her hair was more elaborately arranged than ever.
He had ordered champagne and when it came her eyes sparkled.
"You are going it," she said.
"Because I've ordered fiz?" he asked carelessly, as though he never drank anything else.
"I WAS surprised when you asked me to do a theatre with you."
Conversation did not go very easily, for she did not seem to have much to say; and Philip was nervously conscious that he was not amusing her.
She listened carelessly to his remarks, with her eyes on other diners, and made no pretence that she was interested in him.
He made one or two little jokes, but she took them quite seriously.
The only sign of vivacity he got was when he spoke of the other girls in the shop; she could not bear the manageress and told him all her misdeeds at length.
"I can't stick her at any price and all the air she gives herself.
Sometimes I've got more than half a mind to tell her something she doesn't think I know anything about."
"What is that?" asked Philip.
"Well, I happen to know that she's not above going to Eastbourne with a man for the week-end now and again.
One of the girls has a married sister who goes there with her husband, and she's seen her.
She was staying at the same boarding-house, and she 'ad a wedding-ring on, and I know for one she's not married."
Philip filled her glass, hoping that champagne would make her more affable; he was anxious that his little jaunt should be a success.
He noticed that she held her knife as though it were a pen-holder, and when she drank protruded her little finger.
He started several topics of conversation, but he could get little out of her, and he remembered with irritation that he had seen her talking nineteen to the dozen and laughing with the German.
They finished dinner and went to the play.
Philip was a very cultured young man, and he looked upon musical comedy with scorn.
He thought the jokes vulgar and the melodies obvious; it seemed to him that they did these things much better in France; but Mildred enjoyed herself thoroughly; she laughed till her sides ached, looking at Philip now and then when something tickled her to exchange a glance of pleasure; and she applauded rapturously.
"This is the seventh time I've been," she said, after the first act, "and I don't mind if I come seven times more."
She was much interested in the women who surrounded them in the stalls.
She pointed out to Philip those who were painted and those who wore false hair.
"It is horrible, these West-end people," she said.
"I don't know how they can do it." She put her hand to her hair. "Mine's all my own, every bit of it."
She found no one to admire, and whenever she spoke of anyone it was to say something disagreeable.
It made Philip uneasy.
He supposed that next day she would tell the girls in the shop that he had taken her out and that he had bored her to death.