“That’s it. That must be it. Now I wonder who he expects me to have to dinner to meet him. There’s no use my wiring to Thormanby to come over for the night. He wouldn’t do it. Simply loathes the name of Torrington. Besides, I don’t suppose Thormanby is the kind of man he wants to meet. He’d probably rather hear Brannigan or some one of that sort talking damned Nationalism. But I can’t ask Brannigan, really can’t, you know, Frank. I might have O’Hara, that’s the doctor. I don’t suppose my sister would mind now. She quite dropped Christian Science as soon as she heard Torrington was coming. But I don’t know. O’Hara drinks a bit.” Sir Lucius sat much longer than usual in the dining-room. Frank found himself yawning with uncontrollable frequency. The long day on the sea had made him very sleepy. He did his best to disguise his condition from his uncle, but he felt that his answers to the later questions about Lord Torrington were vague, and he became more and more confused about Sir Lucius’ views of Woman Suffrage. One thing alone became clear to him. Sir Lucius was not anxious to join his sister in the drawingroom. Frank entirely shared his feeling. But in this twentieth century it is impossible for gentlemen to spend the whole evening in the dining-room. Wine drinking is no longer recognised as a valid excuse for the separation of the sexes and tobacco is so universally tolerated that men carry their cigarettes into the drawingroom on all but the most ceremonial occasions. Sir Lucius rose at last. “It’s very hot,” said Frank. “May I sit out for a while on the terrace, Uncle Lucius, before I go into the drawingroom. I’d like a breath of fresh air.” He hobbled out and found a hammock chair not far from the drawingroom window. The voices of Miss Lentaigne and his uncle reached him, the one high-pitched and firm, the other, as he imagined, apologetic and deprecatory. The sound of them, the words being indistinguishable, was somewhat soothing. Frank felt as the poet Lucretius did when from the security of a sheltered nook on the side of a cliff he watched boats tossing on the sea. The sense of neighbouring strain and struggle added to the completeness of his own repose. A bed of mignonette scented the air agreeably. Some white roses glimmered faintly in the twilight. Far off, a grey still shadow, lay the bay. Frank’s cigarette dropped, half smoked, from his fingers. He slept deliciously. A few minutes later he woke with a start. Priscilla stood over him. She was wrapt from her neck to her feet in a pale blue dressing-gown. Her hair hung down her back in a tight plait. On her feet were a pair of well worn bedroom slippers. The big toe of her right foot had pushed its way through the end of one of them.