gaily striped shirts and bright ties, but plain shoulders only. And they pass away as they came, all the youths and maidens of the world with their backs to you. Not one turns for a look at you, not one nods you farewell. It is like your own youth leaving you.... And then magically all alters. Two more bars and, as if some strange and all-potent and instantaneously acting element had been dropped into the setting and returning human fluid, of a sudden it all breaks up. It effervesces. Every couple is seen to be waltzing. Two by two they turn, and your youth is no longer coming to you nor departing from you, but stops and plays. It stops and plays--for two bars--and lo, the other again. Once more they troop towards you with their faces seen, once more troop away with faces averted. The illusion becomes a spell. Coming, going, all different, all the same, parallel legions with faces to the future and faces to the grave--it is a little like Llanyglo itself. Suddenly you find yourself drawn a little closer to John Willie Garden. You do not want to look down from a balcony on all the young manhood and young womanhood of the world. One, one only, will suffice you, and with her you will come brightly down, all eyes and rosiness and laughter, and with her go in a soberer livery away again.... But luckier you than John Willie if you find that one. His eyes, practised as they were in scanning the Kursaal throng, did not see her. The _coda_ came; the vast oblong well lighted up for a moment as a poplar lights up when the wind blows upon it--it was the slightly wider swing of skirts seen from above as the dance quickened to its finale; and then, as if something else potent and inimical had been dropped into the solution, there was a break for the sides, and the shining floor was seen again. "Damn!" muttered John Willie Garden. Percy, relishing the spectacle of John Willie on the hunt, was in no hurry. "The arbours?" he suggested laconically as John Willie rose; but again John Willie did not reply. For one thing, it was a little difficult to see into those dark nooks among Philip Lacey's barrows and planks and new larches and heaps of upturned earth; for another, he had an assurance that she he sought would not be there. "Come on," he grunted. "Ah!" said Percy, with an exaggerated shake of himself. "Has the moment at last arrived when we quaff?" But already John Willie had stridden on ahead. They took a known short cut through dark and obstructed windings, and presently reached the side-door of the adjoining hotel. It had certain rooms where ladies unaccompanied might get a drink, but into these they barely glanced. Percy grinned. Should John Willie find the object of his search in one of the other rooms, then there was reasonable hope of a row. He had never before seen John Willie so persistently asking for trouble.