"I cross to-night," he said, leading her toward the Horse Guards' Parade. "It's Belgium, not France. I'm on the staff. My appointment will appear in the gazette to-morrow. That's fine, but I'd rather----" Irene stopped, almost in the middle of the road. "And you'll wear a cap with a red band and a golden lion, and those ducky little red tabs on the collar! Come at once, and buy them! I refuse to lunch with you otherwise." "A man must not wear the staff insignia until he is gazetted," he reminded her. "Oh!" She was pathetically disappointed. "But, in my case," he went on, "I am specifically ordered to travel in staff uniform, so, as I leave London at seven o'clock----" "You can certainly lunch in all your glory," she vowed. "There's an empty taxi!" Of course, it was pleasant to be on the staff, and thus become even more admired by Irene, if there is a degree surpassing that which is already superlative; but the fly in the ointment of Dalroy's new career lay in the fact that the battle of the Aisne was just beginning, and every British heart throbbed with the hope that the Teuton hordes might be chased back to the frontier as speedily as they had rushed on Paris. Dalroy himself, an experienced soldier, though he had watched those grim columns pouring through the valley of the Meuse, yielded momentarily to the vision splendid. He longed to be there, taking part in the drive. Instead, he was being sent to Belgium, some shrewd head in the War Office having decided that his linguistic powers, joined to a recent first-hand knowledge of local conditions, would be far more profitably employed in Flanders than as a squadron leader in France. Thus, when that day of mellow autumn had sped all too swiftly, and he had said his last good-bye to Irene, it was to Dover he went, being ferried thence to Ostend in a destroyer. In those early weeks of the war all England was agog with the belief that Antwerp would prove a rankling thorn in the ribs of the Germans, while men in high places cherished the delusion that a flank attack was possible along the Ostend-Bruges-Brussels line. But Dalroy was an eminently sane person. Two hours of clear thinking in the train re-established his poise. When the Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the destroyer took him below in mid-Channel for a smoke and a drink, and the talk turned on strategy, the soldier dispelled an alluring mirage with a breath of common sense. "The scheme is nothing short of rank lunacy," he said. "We haven't the men, France can spare none of hers, and Belgium must be crushed when the big battalions meet. Germany has at least three millions in the field already. Paris has been saved by a miracle. By some other miracle we may check the on-rush in France, but, if we start dividing our forces, even Heaven won't help us." "Surely you'll admit that we should strengthen the defence of Antwerp?" argued the sailor.