“Never more,” croaked Gumbril. “Never again,” Mrs. Viveash echoed. “Never again.” There were still no tears behind her eyes. “Did you ever know Tony Lamb?” she asked. “No,” Gumbril answered from his corner. “What about him?” Mrs. Viveash did not answer. What, indeed, about him? She thought of his very clear blue eyes and the fair, bright hair that had been lighter than his brown face. Brown face and neck, red-brown hands; and all the rest of his skin was as white as milk. “I was very fond of him,” she said at last. “That’s all. He was killed in 1917, just about this time of the year. It seems a very long time ago, don’t you think?” “Does it?” Gumbril shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. The past is abolished. _Vivamus, mea Lesbia._ If I weren’t so horribly depressed, I’d embrace you. That would be some slight compensation for my”—he tapped his foot with the end of his walking-stick—“my accident.” “You’re depressed too?” “One should never drink at luncheon,” said Gumbril. “It wrecks the afternoon. One should also never think of the past and never for one moment consider the future. These are treasures of ancient wisdom. But perhaps after a little tea——” He leaned forward to look at the figures on the taximeter, for the cab had come to a standstill—“after a nip of the tannin stimulant”—he threw open the door—“we may feel rather better.” Mrs. Viveash smiled excruciatingly. “For me,” she said, as she stepped out on to the pavement, “even tannin has lost its virtues now.” Mrs. Viveash’s drawing-room was tastefully in the movement. The furniture was upholstered in fabrics designed by Dufy—racehorses and roses, little tennis players clustering in the midst of enormous flowers, printed in grey and ochre on a white ground. There were a couple of lamp-shades by Balla. On the pale rose-stippled walls hung three portraits of herself by three different and entirely incongruous painters, a selection of the usual oranges and lemons, and a rather forbidding contemporary nude painted in two tones of green. “And how bored I am with this room and all these beastly pictures!” exclaimed Mrs. Viveash as she entered. She took off her hat and, standing in front of the mirror above the mantelpiece, smoothed her coppery hair. “You should take a cottage in the country,” said Gumbril, “buy a pony and a governess cart and drive along the twiddly lanes looking for flowers. After tea you open the cottage piano,” and suiting his action to the words, Gumbril sat down at the long-tailed Blüthner, “and you play, you play.” Very slowly and with parodied expressiveness he played the opening theme of the Arietta. “You wouldn’t be bored then,” he said, turning round to her, when he had finished. “Ah, wouldn’t I!” said Mrs. Viveash. “And with whom do you propose that I should share my cottage?” “Any one you like,” said Gumbril. His fingers hung, as though meditating over the keys.