In the gathering twilight a man stood at the eastern window of a room which formed the top story of one of the houses in Peter the Great Terrace--that survival from the early nineteenth century which forms a kind of recess in the broad thoroughfare linking Waterloo Bridge with the Strand. The man's name was Shirley Sherston, and among the happy, prosperous few who are concerned with such things, he was known for his fine, distinguished work in domestic architecture. It was the evening of October 13, 1915, and Sherston was to be married to-morrow. Now, for what most people would have thought a puerile reason, that with him 13 had always proved a luck number, he had much wished that to-day should be his wedding day. And Helen Pomeroy, his future wife, who never thought anything he did or desired to do puerile or unreasonable, had been quite willing to fall in with his fancy. The lucky day had actually been chosen. Then a tiresome woman, a sister of Miss Pomeroy's mother, had said she could not be present at the marriage if it took place on the thirteenth, as on that day her son, who had been home on leave, was going back to the Front. She had also pointed out quite unnecessarily, that 13 is an unlucky number. Staring out into the darkness, Sherston's stormy, eager heart began to quiver with longing, with regret, and with the half-painful rapture of anticipation. He had suddenly visioned--and Sherston was a man given to vivid visions--where he would have been now, at this moment, had his marriage indeed taken place this morning. He saw himself, on this beautiful starlit, moonless night, standing, along with his dear love, on the platform of a medieval tower, which, together with the picturesque farmhouse which had been tacked on to the tower about a hundred years ago, rose, close to the seashore, on a lonely stretch of the Sussex coast. But what was not true tonight would be true to-morrow night, twenty-four hours from now. He had bought tower and house three years ago, and he had spent there many happy holidays, boating and fishing, alone, or in company of some man chum. Sherston had never thought to bring a woman there, for the morrow's bridegroom, for some six to seven years past, had had an impatient contempt for, as well as fear of, women. Sherston was a widower, though he never used the word, even in his innermost heart, for to him the term connoted something slightly absurd, and he was sensitive to ridicule.