Gumbril had looked at his wrist watch and found that it was six o’clock. Already? He prepared himself to take his departure. Wrapped in a pink kimono, she came out into the hall to wish him farewell. “When shall I see you again, Rosie?” He had learnt that her name was Rosie. She had recovered her great lady’s equanimity and detachment, and was able to shrug her shoulders and smile. “How should I know?” she asked, implying that she could not foresee what her caprice might be an hour hence. “May I write then, and ask one of these days if you do know?” She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows, doubtfully. At last nodded. “Yes, you can write,” she permitted. “Good,” said the Complete Man, and picked up his wide hat. She held out her hand to him with stateliness, and with a formal gallantry he kissed it. He was just closing the front door behind him, when he remembered something. He turned round. “I say,” he called after the retreating pink kimono. “It’s rather absurd. But how can I write? I don’t know your name. I can’t just address it ‘Rosie’” The great lady laughed delightedly. This had the real _capriccio_ flavour. “Wait,” she said, and she ran into the sitting-room. She was back again in a moment with an oblong of pasteboard. “There,” she said, and dropped it into his great-coat pocket. Then blowing a kiss she was gone. The Complete Man closed the door and descended the stairs. Well, well, he said to himself; well, well. He put his hand in his coat pocket and took out the card. In the dim light of the staircase he read the name on it with some difficulty. Mrs. James—but no, but no. He read again, straining his eyes; there was no question of it. Mrs. James Shearwater. Mrs. James Shearwater. That was why he had vaguely known the name of Bloxam Gardens. Mrs. James Shear——. Step after step he descended, ponderously. “Good Lord,” he said out loud. “Good Lord.” But why had he never seen her? Why did Shearwater never produce her? Now he came to think of it, he hardly ever spoke of her. Why had she said the flat wasn’t theirs? It was; he had heard Shearwater talk about it. Did she make a habit of this sort of thing! Could Shearwater be wholly unaware of what she was really like? But, for that matter, what _was_ she really like? He was half-way down the last flight, when with a rattle and a squeak of hinges the door of the house, which was only separated by a short lobby from the foot of the stairs, opened, revealing, on the doorstep, Shearwater and a friend, eagerly talking. “... I take my rabbit,” the friend was saying—he was a young man with dark, protruding eyes, and staring, doggy nostrils; very eager, lively and loud. “I take my rabbit and I inject into it the solution of eyes, pulped eyes of another dead rabbit. You see?”