“Not it. It is a shameful fact that no man of poetic tastes can gain a politician’s ear nowadays unless he titillates it with a patriotic jingle. As a forlorn hope I have written a threnody on the fleet. If I can find a good rhyme for ‘guns’ I am made. Can you help? ‘Buns,’ ‘duns,’ ‘nuns’ and ‘tuns,’ are hardly suitable. ‘Suns,’ ‘runs,’ and ‘shuns,’ I have used. Just come into this corner while I--” Miss Cazenove rescued me. “At last I have a moment,” she cried, showing her perfect teeth in a thoroughly good-natured smile. “You don’t mind my carrying him off, do you?” she went on sweetly, as she noted the look of disappointment on my companion’s face. “I have such a lot to say to him.” We hurried away. She laughed merrily when I told her of my escape. “He is a real terror,” she agreed. “One day he tackled dad after luncheon. Do you know my father? He says ‘Gad’ to everything he doesn’t understand, and most other things as well. But on that occasion he lost his temper and said ‘Rats!’” That put us on good terms. I looked forward to an agreeable if not very soulful chat with my radiant hostess, but I was fated to learn, for the hundredth time, that every woman is a born actress. Even the angelic Maggie was a stage adept when it became necessary to cloak her emotions from the public ken. “Are you hungry?” asked Miss Cazenove, guiding me skilfully through the crowded suite of rooms. “No,” I said, flattering myself that the question was only prompted by hospitality. “Then come this way.” Before I well knew what was happening, I was whisked through a curtained door into a passage left purposely unlighted. Clinging to my arm, but really compelling me onward, the girl led me to another door. She entered, and switched on the electric light. Evidently this was her boudoir, but she left me little time to take stock of my surroundings. “Sit down here,” she said. “I don’t care what people think. I _must_ talk with you about Karl. Of course I might have waited until to-morrow and asked you to call, but now that you are here I am consumed with impatience. No, sit just where you are, please. I want to see your face.” “I am a most skilled prevaricator,” I said, for her maneuvering was of the Napoleonic order. I was to be attacked by horse, foot, and artillery, cross-examined and scrutinized at the same time. We sat on a roomy Chesterfield, an article of furniture which suggests insidious confidences; a cluster of lamps equipped with reading reflectors shot their rays directly at us. Moreover, she did not seem to heed the fact that she laid herself open to equally searching criticism on my part. The first shot fired in the encounter showed that my adversary scorned subterfuge. “Who is she?” “Really--” I protested. “Oh, you know very well whom I mean. Karl is engaged to me now, and is going to marry me--I shall see to that. But I must know who the girl is with whom he has been in love since five years ago.” I temporized.