She looked away toward the platform, and he studied her face surreptitiously. It seemed very young till you looked closely, especially at the eyes, and then you perceived something lurking there. She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he concluded. She looked as if she knew the world inside out, and as if there were something hidden below the gaiety. Peter felt curiously and intensely attracted. His shyness vanished. He had, and had had, no intimations of the doings of Providence, and nobody could possibly be more sceptical of fate-lines than he, but it dawned on him as he stared at her that he would fathom that look somehow, somewhere. "I'm practically not made up at all," she whispered, without turning her head, "so for Heaven's sake don't say there's too much powder on my nose." Peter shook silently. "No, but a faint trace on the right cheek," he whispered back. She turned then and looked at him, and her eyes challenged his. And yet it is to be supposed that Hilda knew nothing whatever about it. "'_Right on my mother's knee_....'" sang the platform. "'_Without a shirt, without a shirt_,'" gagged Peter, _sotto voce_, and marvelled at himself. But he felt that her smothered laughter amply rewarded him. The song ceased in time, and the encore, which they both rigorously demanded. And immediately she began again. "I hope to goodness tea isn't far off," she said. "By the way, you'll have to take me to it, now, you know. We go out of that door, and up a flight of steps, and there's the matron's room on the top and a visitor's room next to it, and tea'll be there. It will be a fiendish squash, and I wouldn't go if I hadn't you to get me tea and take me away afterwards as soon as possible." "I'm highly privileged, I'm sure," said Peter again, quite deliberately. She laughed. "You are," she said. "Look how you're coming on! Ten minutes ago you were a bored curate, and now you're--what are you?" Peter hesitated perceptibly. He felt he might say many things. Then he said "A trapped padre," and they both laughed. "Thank goodness you're not sentimental, anyway," she said. "Nor's your friend; but the matron is. I know her sort. Look at them." Peter looked. Donovan appeared still entirely at his ease, but he was watching Peter, who realised why he had been made to look. He brazened it out, smiled back at him, and turned perfectly deliberately to his companion. "Julie," he said, "don't look over there any more, for goodness' sake, or we'll have Donovan here. And if he comes he'll sail in and take you to tea without a word. I know him. He's got an unfair advantage over me. I'm just waking up, and he's been awake for years. Please give me a chance." She leaned, back and regarded him humorously. "You're not doing so badly," she said, "I don't know that a man has ever called me 'Julie' before in the first quarter of an hour. Do you know that, Solomon?"