So they all had to go off to dress without any longed-for word having been spoken. And Mrs. Cricklander was far too circumspect a hostess to attempt to arrange a _tête-à-tête_ after dinner under the eye of an important social leader like Lady Maulevrier, whom she had only just succeeded in enticing to stay in her country house. So, with the usual semi-political chaff, the evening passed, and good-nights and good-bys were said, and early next day John Derringham left for London. He would write--he decided--and all the way up in the train he buried himself in the engrossing letters and papers he had received from his Chief by the morning's post. And for the next six weeks he was in such a turmoil of hard work and deep and serious questions about a foreign State that he very seldom had time to go into society, and when at last he was a little more free, Mrs. Cricklander, he found, had not returned from Paris, whither she always went several times a year for her clothes. But they had written to one another once or twice. He had promised in the last letter that he would go down to Wendover again for Whitsuntide, and this time he firmly determined nothing should keep him from his obvious and delectable fate. Mrs. Cricklander had no haunting fears now. She could discover no reason for John Derringham's change towards her. Arabella had been mute and had put it down to the stress of his life. This tension with the foreign State, it leaked out, had been known to the Ministers for a week before it had been made public--that, of course, was the cause of his preoccupation, and she would simply order some especially irresistible garments in Paris, and bide her time. He wrote the most charming letters, though they were hardly long enough to be called anything but notes; but there was always the insinuation in them that she was the one person in the world who understood him, and they were expressed with his usual cultivated taste. It was sheer force of will that kept John Derringham from ever thinking of Halcyone. He resolutely crushed the thought of her every time it presented itself, and systematically turned to his work and plunged into it, if even a mental vision of her came to his mind's eye. He felt quite calm and safe when, two days before he was expected at Wendover, the idea came to him to propose himself to the Professor, so as not to have to go and see him and endure his cynical reflections _after_ he should be engaged to his hostess. Mr. Carlyon had wired back, "Come if you like," and on this evening in early June John Derringham arrived at the orchard house. Cheiron made no allusion to the matter that had caused them to part with some breezy words upon his old pupil's side. Mrs. Cricklander or Wendover might not have existed; their talk was upon philosophy and politics, and contained not the shadow of a woman--even Halcyone was not mentioned at all.