At the beginning of Part II, Charlie wants to forget the past, as he has lunch with Honoria. He chooses a restaurant unlike those they once frequented, it was "not reminiscent of champagne dinners and long luncheons that began at two and ended in a blurred vague twilight." Today is a special day; a day to be isolated into the present; but this is impossible. Two of the people who helped him to "make months into days" confront him in the restaurant, and the past impinges on the present, foreshadows the past's impingement on the future.
Babylon Revisited