It was ...

altogether too good to be true! Later, after she had spent a half-amused, half-wistful quarter of an hour in front of her glass, seeing inescapable white hairs and an irremediable double chin, she had gone down to the dining room for lunch.

All the tables being occupied, what more natural or disconcerting than for this modern Raleigh to rise and rather clumsily and eagerly beg that she would share the one just allotted to himself.
To the elderly man, whose nose had been too close to the grindstone to permit of dalliance, and who now, monied and retired, found himself terribly alone in the pale sun of St.Martin's Summer, and to the little charming woman of forty, led back to life by an ardent and impetuous girl, this quite ordinary everyday incident, which seemed to them to be touched by romance, came at a moment when both were pathetically receptive.

They arranged to meet again, they met again, and one fine afternoon while Joan was at a theater with Alice, he spoke and she listened.

It was in the more than usually hotel-like drawing-room of their mutual hotel.