"If you're really serious, sir," he said, "I always remember it very carefully. I don't suppose you're suggesting that I've ever shown want of respect for Sylvia." The General shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "And damn it all I'm worried. I'm . . . Hang it, I'm your father's oldest friend." The General looked indeed worn and saddened in the light of the sand-drifted, ground glass windows. He said: "Was that skirt a . . . a friend of yours? Had you arranged it with her?" Tietjens said: "Wouldn't it be better, Sir, if you said what you had on your mind? . . ." The old General blushed a little. "I don't like to," he said straightforwardly. "You brilliant fellows. . . . I only want, my dear boy, to hint that. . ." Tietjens said, a little more stiffly: "I'd prefer you to get it out, sir. . . . I acknowledge your right as my father's oldest friend." "Then," the General burst out, "who was the skirt you were lolloping up Pall Mall with? On the last day they trooped the colours? . . . I didn't see her myself. . . . Was it this same one? Paul said she looked like a cook maid." Tietjens made himself a little more rigid. "She was, as a matter of fact, a bookmaker's secretary," Tietjens said. "I imagine I have the right to walk where I like, with whom I like. And no one has the right to question it. . . . I don't mean you, sir. But no one else." The General said puzzledly: "It's you _brilliant_ fellows. . . . They all say you're brilliant. . . ." Tietjens said: "You might let your rooted distrust of intelligence . . . It's natural of course; but you might let it allow you to be just to me. I assure you there was nothing discreditable." The General interrupted: "If you were a stupid young subaltern and told me you were showing your mother's new cook the way to the Piccadilly tube I'd believe you. . . . But, then, no young subaltern would do such a damn, blasted, tomfool thing! Paul said you walked beside her like the king in his glory! Through the crush outside the Haymarket, of all places in the world!" "I'm obliged to Sandbach for his commendation. . . ." Tietjens said. He thought a moment. Then he said: "I was trying to get that young woman. . . . I was taking her out to lunch from her office at the bottom of the Haymarket. . . . To get her off a friend's back. That is, of course, between ourselves." He said this with great reluctance because he didn't want to cast reflection on Macmaster's taste, for the young lady had been by no means one to be seen walking with a really circumspect public official. But he had said nothing to indicate Macmaster, and he had other friends. The General choked.