It would be much nicer to walk home through Kensington Gardens and Hyde
Park.
She was glad that they were going to have a quiet evening. After three
evenings at the play and Richard ruining himself in hansoms and not
sleeping.... After this unbelievable afternoon. All those people, those
terribly important people.
It was amusing to go about with Richard and feel important yourself
because you were with him. And to see Richard's ways with them, his nice
way of behaving as if _he_ wasn't important in the least, as if it was
you they had made all that fuss about.
To think that the little dried up schoolmasterish man was Professor Lee
Ramsden, prowling about outside the group, eager and shy, waiting to be
introduced to you, nobody taking the smallest notice of him. The woman
who had brought him making soft, sentimental eyes at you through the gaps
in the group, and trying to push him in a bit nearer. Then Richard asking
you to be kind for one minute to the poor old thing. It hurt you to see
him shy and humble and out of it.
And when you thought of his arrogance at Durlingham.
It was the women's voices that tired you so, and their nervous, snapping
eyes.
The best of all was going away from them quietly with Richard into
Kensington Gardens.
"Did you like it, Mary?"
"Frightfully. But not half so much as this."