She leaned towards him a little as he sat with lowered eyes. "This is a time of grave anxiety, isn't it?" she continued gently, as if explaining something to an impatient child. "You naval men ought to know. There is talk of war everywhere--of war with Germany. They say we are on the brink of it to-day." Torps nodded. "Supposing it came now . . . and you were recalled. How do they recall you? Sound a bugle--beat a drum?" Torps smiled faintly. "Something of the sort--no, not a drum; a bugle, perhaps." "Well, we'll suppose it is a drum. One somehow associates it with war and alarms. Would you hesitate to obey?" Torps refrained from the obvious answer and plucked a grass-stem to put between his teeth. "You would obey, wouldn't you, because it is your duty--however much you'd like to sit here with me? Will you try to realise that I shall be only answering the drum, too, when--I go back." The breeze that strayed about the floor of the Channel fanned their faces and set the bright sea-poppies nodding all along the edge of the cliffs. The sun was low in the west, and a snake-like flotilla of destroyers crept out across the quiet sea from the harbour hidden by a fold in the hills. Torps watched them with absent eyes, and there was a long silence. The wind had loosened a strand of his companion's hair, and she was busy replacing it with deft fingers. "Margaret," he replied at last, "you said just now that I understood very little about women. I think you are right. Perhaps if I understood more I might know how to muffle the drum so that you wouldn't hear it. I might have learned to pipe a tune that would make you not want to hear it. . . . I don't know. . . . But I accept all you say--although deep down in my heart I know you are wrong. There will come a day when you, too, will know you are wrong. I shall come back then. And till then, since I must"--he smiled in a whimsical, sad way that somehow relaxed the tension--"I lend you to the children." She returned his smile quite naturally, with relief in her eyes. "Dear Trevor, yes . . . because they need me so. . . . Believe me, I am not wrong: and we keep our friendship still, sweet and sane----" She broke off suddenly and raised a slim forefinger, holding her head sideways to listen, the way women and birds and children seem to hear better. "Hark! Did you hear? How odd! Listen, Trevor!" Torps brought himself back with an effort. "Hear what?" "Listen!" He listened. "I can hear the waves along the shingle." "No, no. . . . There--now!" "Oh! . . . Yes, I can hear. . . . It sounds like a drum." "Trevor, it _is_ a drum, somewhere out at sea! How odd when we were just talking about drums--hush! Oh, do listen. . . ." The sound, borne to them on the light wind, seemed to grow nearer; then it waned till they could scarcely catch the beats. Anon it swelled louder: the unmistakable "Dub! dub! rub-a-dub! dub! . . . Dub! dub! dub!" of a far-off drum.