"They’d rush the boats," declared Rhona, "only that the Companies keep up the gangways. I suppose," she grimaced, "the authorities at Ostend don’t want a scare. They believe—I hope they may get it!—there’ll yet be an Autumn Season. Hang these profit-hoggers! If I’d my way I’d lower every blessed gangway and let everyone who wanted walk on board. If Belgium hadn’t faced the music there’d be Germans in England now, murdering and burning.... They’ve a right to come. Let ’em all come! Britain’s big enough, I should hope!" "_Brava, Mademoiselle. Bis!_" d’Asnay applauded noiselessly. "That is what you said to me on the deck of the steamer. Say it again, say it often, and the people will be let come!" "Oh, I’ve my plan." Rhona’s light eyes sparkled wickedly. "People here want waking up. They’re kept in cotton-wool. Eyes bunged up and ears stuffed. What they want is—to see and hear. Well, a few of ’em are doing it. That," she nodded knowingly at d’Asnay, "is where my Distinguished Visitors come in." The lips under the fiercely-waxed moustaches smiled. Margot liked the look of this officer of the Belgian General Staff, with the savage eyes and the smooth olive skin, the pointed chestnut beard, fiercely-waxed moustache, and the cool, polite manner. He wore the uniform of the Belgian Chasseurs à Cheval, and the vulture-plumes of his high shako were cut and broken and scorched in places, the gold braiding of his dark blue tunic was tarnished and weather-beaten, and the grey, blue-striped overalls and spurred black knee-boots were rusty with old mud and white with new dust. "You’re from the Front?" she queried, as she moved with Rhona and the Belgian towards the glass swing-doors, giving access from the vestibule to the Club’s big ground-floor drawing-room. He answered: "There are several Fronts—and I have the honour to come from one of them, Madame." "With dispatches?" "Possibly with dispatches, Madame!" He answered with an amused side-glance at the small, vivacious face. "Though there are swifter methods of transmitting intelligence than by entrusting letters to a messenger’s hands." As he moved beside her, courteously replying, she saw the crimson and green enamelled, purple-ribboned Cross of the Belgian Order of Leopold shining upon the dark blue tunic-breast. "How are—things—getting on? Nobody tells us anything," twittered the humming-bird. "We might live at the North Pole." "Madame might find even at the North Pole compensations for the low temperature and the lack of society." The vulture-plumes on the dark blue shako nodded as he turned his face to her. "In the fact that there are no Boches there," he added, and the smile that had curved the soldierly moustache vanished as though the word had wiped it from his mouth.