Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/204

 that emanated from her and drowned the senses. But, ha! ha! she was a fine geerl, after all. She meant no hairm; and she was worth seeing. They'd better get their dinner at Beemer's if only to see her, and a good dinner they'd get. He had left The Duke of York to go to Beemer's. He'd had enough of their overcharging and tough pastry. Bastien was a blow-hard, and the absent owner a fool.

Wherever Kirke went longing looks were cast after his tall rain-coated figure. If only he could be made to tell all that he knew!

That day the dining-room at Beemer's would not seat all the guests. The tables had to be laid a second time, an unprecedented thing except at Fair time. Beemer, a fat little man with bottle shoulders and oily hands, wished to Heaven that he had a Chinese gong such as was sounded at The Duke of York, but he placed the copper dinner bell in Delight's hand, as though it were the hunting horn of Diana and bade her ring long and loudly.

It was a dark hall at Beemer's, and to overcome this he had had a bracket lamp with a reflector behind it set at right angles to the door of the dining-room. She stood before this, the black, closed door behind her, clad in her narrow black dress, her beautiful face illuminated, her eyes sombre and full of an unnamed longing, her lips parted as though she panted to be free. . . . As her right hand moved up and down, and the bell rent the air with its clamour, her left was laid against her breast as though to still the throbbing of her heart. She saw nothing, being bewildered by the glare in her eyes, the clanging of the bell, after the country quiet to which she had become accustomed. Men crowded about her, staring into her face, their breath, hot with spirits, stifling her, while Beemer, dizzy with elation, sidled to and fro across