"If Budapest's the place for the girls you say it is, old pal, with the Turkish baths and all, we'll paint the old town red all right, next month," and he winked at Tietjens. His friend, with his head down, seemed to make internal rumblings, looking apprehensively beneath his blotched forehead at the General. "Not," the other continued argumentatively, "that I don't love my old woman. She's all right. And then there's Gertie. 'Ot stuff, but the real thing. But I say a man wants . . ." He ejaculated, "Oh!" The General, his hands in his pockets, very tall, thin, red-cheeked, his white hair combed forward in a fringe, sauntered towards the other table. It was not two yards, but it seemed a long saunter. He stood right over them, they looking up, open-eyed, like schoolboys at a balloon. He said: "I'm glad you're enjoying our links, gentlemen." The bald man said: "We are! We are! First-class. A treat!" "But," the General said, "it isn't wise to discuss one's . . . eh . . . domestic circumstances . . . at . . . at mess, you know, or in a golf house. People might hear." The gentleman with the oily hair half rose and exclaimed: "Oo, the . . ." The other man mumbled: "Shut up, Briggs." The General said: "I'm the president of the club, you know. It's my duty to see that the _majority_ of the club and its visitors are pleased. I hope you don't mind." The General came back to his seat. He was trembling with vexation. "It makes one as beastly a bounder as themselves," he said. "But what the devil else was one to do?" The two city men had ambled hastily into the dressing-rooms; the dire silence fell. Macmaster realised that, for these Tories at least, this was really the end of the world. The last of England! He returned, with panic in his heart, to Tietjens' telegram. . . . Tietjens was going to Germany on Tuesday. He offered to throw over the department. . . . These were unthinkable things. You couldn't imagine them! He began to read the telegram all over again. A shadow fell upon the flimsy sheets. The Rt. Hon. Mr. Waterhouse was between the head of the table and the windows. He said: "We're much obliged, General. It was impossible to hear ourselves speak for those obscene fellows' smut. It's fellows like that that make our friends the suffragettes! That warrants them. . . ." He added: "Hullo! Sandbach! Enjoying your rest?" The General said: "I was hoping you'd take on the job of telling these fellows off." Mr. Sandbach, his bull-dog jaw sticking out, the short black hair on his scalp appearing to rise, barked: "Hullo, Waterslop! Enjoying your plunder?" Mr. Waterhouse, tall, slouching and untidy-haired, lifted the flaps of his coat. It was so ragged that it appeared as if straws stuck out of the elbows. "All that the suffragettes have left of me," he said, laughingly. "Isn't one of you fellows a genius called Tietjens?" He was looking at Macmaster. The General said: "Tietjens . . . Macmaster . . ." The Minister went on very friendly: