He was leaning over the rail in much the same place and attitude when he saw, with a strange thrill, the once familiar figure of old Bunnett coming towards him, pushing his invalid mother in what was surely the same bath-chair. Royce straightened himself, and turned to meet them. He wondered if they would recognise him. There was something of the old self-conscious boast in his attitude as he held out his hand and said; “Hullo! Bunny. Still here, then?” Bunnett and his mother sniffed in concert, a deep and melancholy comment on life. “Still here,” agreed Bunnett, and his mother added, “So you’re back in London, Mr. Royce?” “For a few days,” Royce admitted. “South African job turn out all right?” Bunnett asked. Royce hesitated. In one swift flash of retrospect he looked back on those full and varied adventures that had begun for him with the voyage to Capetown, and knew that though he stood there talking and boasting for a week, he could not convey to old Bunnett and his mother one-hundredth part of the romance and wonder that had glorified his existence for fifteen years. “Oh! yes; all right,” he said; “and you? Still with Stamps?” And Bunnett, too, hesitated as if there were something he also lacked power to describe before he answered “Yes, still there.” The conversation seemed to offer no further possibilities. For a moment they stood awkwardly, and then Bunnett said, “My mother’s a bit of an invalid, but she’s been a little better lately.” He sniffed thoughtfully. As Royce made his way back to his hotel he modestly thanked God that he was not as some other men. He had, however, missed one small observation. He had been standing on Bunnett’s right side as they talked, and had not noticed that he had lost his left arm. REFERENCE WANTED! As usual, the compartment was nearly empty after we left Rickmansworth, and I anticipated that my one other fellow-passenger would probably get out at the next station and leave me to finish the dull journey alone. I did not, in any case, expect much entertainment from his society. He had a narrow forehead, and a preoccupied, rather scared, expression. It crossed my mind that he might have been a sufferer from shell-shock. I had seen that look in the eyes of one such case, a look at once timid, defensive, and suspicious. I was surprised when he came across the compartment to the seat opposite to me and began to talk. We opened in the usual way by abusing the line, but he broke off in the middle to comment on the book I had been reading, Dostoievsky’s _The Possessed_. “Fine stuff, that,” he commented, looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and then added, “What’s that other book of his, Anna--something?” “Anna Karenin?” I suggested. He nodded. “But that’s Tolstoi,” I said. “Very likely,” he replied; “I’ve no memory for some things. No memory at all. But I’ve read more than you might expect. To be quite honest, when I was a bit younger I read too much.”