On this, of all nights! Their bridal night! Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it. Jack's wedding-night! She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling out to my observer.... We _were_ pals!... I don't think it could ever be exactly like that with a girl." She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but not the same." And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of Jack's. And this----_This!_--was her bridal night. Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh.... In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I should be friends with you." "Have you?" "Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?" mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so afraid you'll be dead tired." "Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs. Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a moment. "And--well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again." Yes, they were starting again....