This was what occupied me all the time Sydney was talking, for he was in a mood to talk to anyone. I, for example, was not the Rose, but I had shared rooms with the Rose, and he was eager to tell me about her, and how she had gone to stay with his married sister until—something or other to do with “the Mamma.” Poor Lady Vandeleur, fated to see her only son falling in love with such totally ineligible girls! First a City typist at twenty-five shillings a week; now a Bond Street mannequin! But my employer didn’t know of this change. How could he? He probably—yes, certainly!—imagines things are as they might once have seemed to be. Will he think I arranged this? “Of course you know her—but not as one does now!—the last few weeks! We were together at the Café Royal—He’s going to paint her—Colouring!—Wonderful! You should have seen the costume I designed for her—Five Arts Ball——Purposely giving the effect of——Quite in the period, of course!—People who understand!—Such _souplesse_ of mind as she has——” Sydney went on to the air. My whole attention was for someone very different. He can’t imagine I’d do anything so underhand! Even if he did imagine that—well, I couldn’t explain unless he asked. If he did ask, I could explain less than ever! Oh, why can’t I wipe four months straight out of this year and begin again? But then, there would have been Jack to help! But then, there would have been Sydney.... I should have been engaged to this creature before me in that hat, talking of Cicely’s _souplesse_ of mind! If he—the other one—only knew what I really think of Sydney! “Fancy,” I commented haphazard to the rhapsodist before me. “Well; I do hope everything will be all right.” And I took up the magazine my employer had tossed on to my lap—there was a picture on the cover of a pretty Summer-girl looking over the sea—and prepared to hold it up in front of me for the rest of the journey. Sydney—surprised and sulky—read his _English Review_. Presently I refused his not too pressing invitation to join him in the dining-car, and he left me for an hour and a half. For love, that robs us women of the appetite for anything but Romance, seems to make men even hungrier for their food. * * * * * “Eus-tern!” came the familiar Cockney bawl again at last. “Eus-tern!” It was a change, after what I’d been used to for the last few weeks, to have to fend for myself in the matter of luggage and a taxi. One doesn’t specially look to men in love for decent manners. Still—that other one knew how to pay these attentions in spite of his Odette and her gloves! Sydney’s evidently the type that pays homage to the Well-Beloved by being casual towards every other woman. He seemed to efface himself until his lukewarm offer of getting me a cab could be answered from the cab-window. “Ah—may I tell him to drive to Marconi Mansions, Miss Trant?”