Nordenholt came into the room almost at once with a grave apology to Miss Huntingtower for being late. “Convenient having a house in the University Square,” he said to me. “If we hadn’t taken over some of these professors’ residences, it would have meant such a waste of time getting to and fro between one’s home and the office. That was one reason why I selected the University as a centre. We had the whole thing ready-made for us.” Henley-Davenport arrived almost at once; and we went down to dinner. I had begun to re-acclimatise myself in these surroundings; but I still recall that evening in every detail. The shaded candles on the table, which soothed my straining eyes, the glitter of silver and crystal on the snowy cloth, Nordenholt’s lean visage half in shadow except when he leaned forward into the soft illumination, Henley-Davenport’s sharp voice driving home a point, and Miss Huntingtower’s eager face as she glanced from speaker to speaker or put a question to one of us: with it all, I seemed back again in my lost world and the Nitrogen Area appeared to belong to another region of my life. But even here it penetrated, though faintly. The usual topics of conversation were gone: theatres, books, all our old interests had been uprooted and cast aside, so that we could only take them up in the form of reminiscence. And, as a matter of fact, we talked very little about them. I tried one or two tentative efforts; but Henley-Davenport, who had known Nordenholt and his ward longer than I, made very little attempt to follow me: and I soon gathered that Miss Huntingtower was better pleased with other subjects. What appeared to interest her most was the general situation; and I was rather flattered to find that she seemed anxious to hear my own views. She seemed to be one of those people who are gifted with the faculty of drawing one out. I don’t mean that she sat silent and merely listened; but she had the knack of stimulating one to talk and of keeping one to the main line by occasional questions, which showed that she had not only followed what had been said but had silently commented upon it as one went along. Yet she never appeared to lose her charm by aping masculinity. Her outlook was a feminine one in its essentials, even if her mind was acute. And she had the gift of naturalness. There was no artificiality either in look or speech. She made me feel almost at once as though I had known her for years. One thing I did notice about her. Whenever Nordenholt spoke she seemed to hang on his words and to weigh them mentally. The two seemed to be joined by some intimate bond of understanding; and I could see that Nordenholt was proud of her in his way. Dinner drew to an end, and Nordenholt began to question Henley-Davenport about his researches. Miss Huntingtower interrupted at the beginning with a request for simple language.