“No, you’re not. You’re coming to the Club with me.” Fanshawe walked over, pulled his friend to his feet. “Come on, you old ass,” he said kindly. . . . They went out. “Poor devil,” said Peter, “he must have bolted straight here from Mess. . . .” “And Fanshawe followed him.” Both men, though neither would have admitted the fact to the other, were on edge. “Fanshawe was right not to leave him alone,” went on Bromley. “You never know what a chap will do when he gets into that sort of state. Thank goodness, I’m a quiet old stick, I am.” He shook his big frame; tugged at his moustache; sat down again. Peter lit a cigar. But neither Peter’s smoke nor Bromley’s book could keep Bareton out of their minds. He seemed to be still on the sofa, blazing tears in blazing eyes. “Let’s call up a taxi and go into Brighton,” said Peter suddenly. “I can’t stick this room any more tonight.” Bromley looked up from “The Newcomes”—“We’ll share it, then.” “No, we won’t. My taxi and my dinner. Go and get your slacks on. I’ll run out and telephone for the car.” § 4 The Hotel Metropole at Brighton is a monstrous edifice of red-brick and iron balconies, which leers stolidly across an asphalt “Front” to the sea. The stone steps of its entrance, occupied of a morning by fat couples in wicker chairs, lead under a glass-roofed portico, through a revolving door past the mahogany “Reception Offices” to a narrow hall—fire-placed and crowded with comfortable Maplesque upholstery. Beyond, are marble corridors, lifts, and a dark lounge which opens out into a vast conservatory of glass-and-iron work, wherein the band plays and love-birds (some caged, some in coats and skirts) twitter behind dusty palm-trees. In front of the fire-place in the hall, cocktail in hand, looking down on his wife’s blond head, stood “Weasel” Stark of the Gunners. His nickname fitted the dapper fresh-complexioned little soldier well. He had reddish hair, inclined to curl: eyes of clear cold blue: flat auburn moustache over firm lips. The tight long-skirted tunic, beltless for dinner, fitted like a skin over the muscled shoulders, the in-curved back: his slacks fell straightly creased to shining brown shoes. His hands—clean capable hands—showed a hint of freckling, the suspicion of auburn fluff. The domed forehead betrayed intelligence. A brand-new D.S.O. ribbon completes the picture. Alice Stark (once, as Alice Sewell, the object of Jack Baynet’s none-too-stable affections) was a comfortable little person, brown-eyed, a little rabbity about the mouth. Her low dress, blue and girlish, revealed excellent shoulders, firm arms and slim hands. The pair had been married six months: three of which the husband had spent on active service. A wound in the foot, now almost healed, had re-united them. “Almost time for dinner, I think,” said the Colonel, putting his empty glass on the mantelshelf behind him.