The waiter kept one eye on it, while his other eye followed the long back of a tall, not very young girl, who passed up to a distant table looking perfectly sightless and altogether unapproachable.

She seemed to be a habitual customer.
On going out the Assistant Commissioner made to himself the observation that the patrons of the place had lost in the frequentation of fraudulent cookery all their national and private characteristics.

And this was strange, since the Italian restaurant is such a peculiarly British institution.

But these people were as denationalised as the dishes set before them with every circumstance of unstamped respectability.

Neither was their personality stamped in any way, professionally, socially or racially.