As she spoke Poppy dashed her hand against the push of the electric bell, and held it there, ringing a prolonged alarum, in quick response to which Phillimore, the respectable elderly parlour maid, appeared, bearing two rose-shaded lamps. Noiselessly and deftly--as one accustomed to agitations, whose eyes did not see or ears hear if it should be unadvisable to permit them to do so--she drew the curtains, made up the fire, set out the tea-table. And with that change of scene and shutting out of the dusk, Poppy seemed to change also; gravity and strength of purpose departing from her, and leaving her--notwithstanding her sober dress--unreal, fictitious, artificial, the red-lipped carmine-tinted lady of the footlights, of the windswept dust and embroidered dragons again. She chattered, moreover, ceaselessly, careless of interruption, and of criticism alike. "Here, let's hark back to the ordinary conduct of material existence," she said. "Tea? Won't you sit down? No--well, just as you like best. Take it standing. Let me see, what were we discussing when we got switched on to unexpectedly personal lines of conversation? The war--yes, I remember. I was just going to tell you that Fallowfeild believes it's going to be a nasty dragging unsatisfactory business. Everyone gasses about the Boers being a simple pastoral people. But Fallowfeild says their simplicity is just another name for guile, and that he anyway can't conceive a more disconcerting job than fighting a nation of farmers and huntsmen and gamekeepers in their own country, every inch of which they know. People say they've no military science. But so jolly much the better for them. They can be unfettered opportunists, with nothing to think of but outwitting the enemy and saving their property and their skins. The poor British Tommy will be no match for them; nor will the British officer-man either, till he's unlearned his parade-ground etiquette, and his haw-haw red-tape methods and manner, and learned their very primitive but very cute and foxy ones. By which time, Fallowfeild says, the mourning warehouses here at home will have made a record turnover, and there will be altogether too many new graveyards for comfort in South Africa." Poppy paused in her harangue, for Dominic Iglesias had set down his cup, its contents untasted. He was sad at heart. "Are you going?" she asked. "Yes," he answered. "It grows late. It's time I went, I think." "Perhaps it is." Poppy's eyes had become inscrutable. "I really ought to attend to my Gamping, and pass the time of day with Cappadocia. Her snappishness has scared the maids. They refuse to go within a measured furlong of her." Poppy bent down over the tea-table, arranging the teacups with elaborate neatness. "Good-by," she said. "I don't quite know when we shall meet again." "Why?" Iglesias asked. The muscles of his throat were rigid. He had much ado to speak plainly and naturally. "Are you leaving home?"