"Don't be childish. I liked to stay--never mind why--or I should not have done so. Only now--you are getting better, and I realize the situation more. I hardly know where to go. Not back to England, certainly, yet. Besides the nuisance and chance work of picking up a stud in the middle of the season, it isn't pleasant to be consoled for a blank day by, 'you should have been here last month. Never was such scent; and heaps of straight-running foxes!' And then they indulge themselves in an imaginative 'cracker,' knowing you can't contradict them. Shall I go to Albania? I should like to kill _something_ before I turn homeward." Harry seemed musing. Suddenly he half started up, clapping his hands. "I knew I had forgotten!" "Not such a singular circumstance as to warrant all that indecent exultation," was the reply. "Well, out with it." "I never told you that Fan had a letter this morning from Cecil Tresilyan (they're immense friends, you know) to ask her to engage rooms for them. They are in Paris now, and will be here in three days." Keene raised himself on his arm, regarding his comrade with a sort of admiration. "You're a natural curiosity, _mon cher_. None of us ever quite appreciated you. I don't believe there's another man in existence, situated as we are, who would have kept that intelligence at the back of his head so long. _The_ Tresilyan, of course? I remember hearing about her in India. Annesley came back from sick leave perfectly insane on the subject. She _must_ be something extraordinary, for the recollection of her made even him poetical--when he was sober. I asked about her when I got to England, but her mother was taken very ill, or did something equally unjustifiable, so she left town before I saw her."