They were walking down Rotten Row as Holroyd said this, with the dull leaden surface of the Serpentine on their right, and away to the left, across the tan and the grey sward, the Cavalry Barracks, with their long narrow rows of gleaming windows. Up the long convex surface of the Row a faint white mist was crawling, and a solitary, spectral-looking horseman was cantering noiselessly out of it towards them. The evening had almost begun; the sky had changed to a delicate green tint, merged towards the west in a dusky crocus, against which the Memorial spire stood out sharp and black; from South Kensington came the sound of a church bell calling for some evening service. 'Doesn't that bell remind you somehow of Cambridge days?' said Mark. 'I could almost fancy we were walking up again from the boats, and that was the chapel bell ringing.' 'I wish we were,' said Holroyd with a sigh: 'they were good old times, and they will never come back.' 'You're very low, old fellow,' said Mark, 'for a man going back to his native country.' 'Ah, but I don't feel as if it was my native country, you see. I've lived here so long. And no one knows me out there except my poor old father, and we're almost strangers. I'm leaving the few people I care for behind me.' 'Oh, it will be all right,' said Mark, with the comfortable view one takes of another's future; 'you'll get on well enough. We shall have you a rich coffee planter, or a Deputy Judge Advocate, in no time. _Any_ fellow has a chance out there. And you'll soon make friends in a place like that.' 'I like my friends ready-made, I think,' said Holroyd; 'but one must make the best of it, I suppose.' They had come to the end of the Row; the gates of Kensington Gardens were locked, and behind the bars a policeman was watching them suspiciously, as if he suspected they might attempt a forcible entry. 'Well,' said Mark, stopping, 'I suppose you turn off here?' Holroyd would have been willing to go on with him as far as Kensington had Mark proposed it, but he gave no sign of desiring this, so his friend's pride kept him silent too. 'One word more about the--the book,' he said. 'I may put your name and address on the title-page, then? It goes off to Chilton and Fladgate to-night.' 'Oh yes, of course,' said Mark, 'put whatever you like.' 'I've not given them my real name, and, if anything comes of it, I should like that kept a secret.' 'Just as you please; but why?' 'If I keep on at the Bar, a novel, whether it's a success or not, is not the best bait for briefs,' said Holroyd; 'and besides, if I am to get a slating, I'd rather have it under an _alias_, don't you see? So the only name on the title-page is "Vincent Beauchamp."' 'Very well,' said Mark, 'none shall know till you choose to tell them, and, if anything has to be done about the book, I'll see to it with pleasure, and write to you when it's settled. So you can make your mind easy about _that_.' 'Thanks,' said Holroyd; 'and now, good-bye, Mark.'