There was a clock chiming as they crossed the yard and a slightly drunk farmer trying to start up his car. Then they went up an oak staircase lined with blunderbusses and coaching prints to their room.
They had no luggage (the chambermaid remarked on this next day to the young man who worked at the wireless shop, saying that that was the worst of being in a main road hotel. You got all sorts).
Adam undressed very quickly and got into bed; Nina more slowly arranging her clothes on the chair and fingering the ornaments on the chimney-piece with less than her usual self-possession. At last she put out the light.
'Do you know,' she said, trembling slightly as she got into bed, 'this is the first time this has happened to me?'
'It's great fun,' said Adam, 'I promise you.'
'I'm sure it is,' said Nina seriously, 'I wasn't saying anything against it. I was only saying that it hadn't happened before. . . . Oh, Adam. . . .'
* * * *
'And you said that really divine things didn't happen,' said Adam in the middle of the night.
'I don't think that this is at all divine,' said Nina. 'It's given me a pain. And - - my dear, that reminds me. I've something terribly important to say to you in the morning.'
'What?'
'Not now, darling. Let's go to sleep for a little, don't you think?'
Before Nina was properly awake Adam dressed and went out into the rain to get a shave. He came back bringing two toothbrushes and a bright red celluloid comb. Nina sat up in bed and combed her hair. She put Adam's coat over her back.
'My dear, you look exactly like La Vie Parisienne,' said Adam, turning round from brushing his teeth. Then she threw off the coat and jumped out of bed, and he told her that she looked like a fashion drawing without the clothes. Nina was rather pleased about that, but she said that it was cold and that she still had a pain, only not so bad as it was. Then she dressed and they went downstairs.
Every one else had had breakfast and the waiters were laying the tables for luncheon.
'By the way,' said Adam. 'You said there was something you wanted to say.'
'Oh, yes, so there is. My dear, something quite awful.'
'Do tell me.'
'Well, it's about that cheque papa gave you. I'm afraid it won't help us as much as you thought.'
'But, darling, it's a thousand pounds, isn't it?'
'Just look at it, my sweet.' She took it out of her bag and handed it across the table.
'I don't see anything wrong with it,' said Adam.
'Not the signature?'
'Why, good lord, the old idiot's signed it "Charlie Chaplin".'
'That's what I mean, darling.'
'But can't we get him to alter it? He must be dotty. I'll go down and see him again to-day.'
'I shouldn't do that, dear . . . don't you see. . . . Of course, he's very old, and . . . I dare say you may have made things sound a little odd . . . don't you think, dear, he must have thought you a little dotty? . . . I mean . . . perhaps . . . that cheque was a kind of joke.'
'Well I'm damned . . . this really is a bore. When everything seemed to be going so well, too. When did you notice the signature, Nina?'
'As soon as you showed it to me, at Margot's. Only you looked so happy I didn't like to say anything. . . . You did look happy, you know, Adam, and so sweet. I think I really fell in love with you for the first time when I saw you dancing all alone in the hall.'
'Well I'm damned,' said Adam again. 'The old devil.'
'Anyway, you've had some fun out of it, haven't you. . . or haven't you?'
'Haven't you?'
'My dear, I never hated anything so much in my life. . . still, as long as you enjoyed it that's something.'
'I say, Nina,' said Adam after some time, 'we shan't be able to get married after all.'
'No, I'm afraid not.'
'It is a bore, isn't it?'
Later he said, 'I expect that parson thought I was dotty too.' And later, 'As a matter of fact, it's rather a good joke, don't you think?'
'I think it's divine.'
In the train Nina said: 'It's awful to think that I shall probably never, as long as I live, see you dancing like that again all by yourself.'
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