He was over sixty, yet, in truth, no better dancer took the floor that night. But it pleased him to talk of his decrepitude. “I’m not made right,” said Leslie, as he guided her through the dancers who crowded the floor. “Young men have no appeal for me whatever.” Mr. Coldwell peered down at her. “Are you going to be one of those love-is-not-for-me girls?” he asked gloomily. “Somehow I can’t imagine you running a garage of toy poms.” Leslie’s eyes roved around the room, and presently they rested upon Margaret Dawlish; hard-faced, inflexible, the type of Roman mother who could never forgive the humiliation that Peter had brought upon her. How queer was the average man’s conception of the average woman! The conventional mother, soft, yielding, ready to endure all and forgive all for the sake of her children, was no figment of imagination, but the throw-outs were innumerable. Leslie started to count all the instances she knew, and grew tired of the exercise. She had witnessed, incredible though it might seem, a mother dancing on this very floor while her child was dying in a nursing home a few streets away. She knew mothers who could not speak of their daughters without growing incoherent with rage. And this was the fourth instance of a mother who could sweep her only son out of memory, out of existence, for some offence he had committed, not against her, but against society. Margaret Dawlish sat alone at a little table, very upright, very forbidding, and when the maître d’hôtel, in the manner of his kind, approached her with a smile, she dismissed him with a few words, and, raising her lorgnette, made an inspection of the dancers. “That woman is granite,” said Leslie, as the band stopped and they walked back to their table. “Which? You mean Mrs. Dawlish? Yes. I rather think she is on the hard side. That sort of thing meant a lot to her. She hates this company and this place, but for five years, ever since her son was sent to prison, she has made a point of dining here.” Leslie nodded. “A gesture of defiance! Gosh! These respectable people! They dare not leave a room for fear somebody talks behind their backs!” It was toward eleven o’clock, and Coldwell had summoned the waiter to pay his bill, when a footman came from the vestibule and, bending over, whispered something to him. “A phone message; I expect it’s from the Embankment,” he said. “Excuse me, Leslie.” He threaded a way through the dancers on the floor, and was gone ten minutes. When he came back, she saw his white eyebrows were met in a frown. “The Kingston police think they’ve got a line to those infernal motor-car bandits,” he said. He referred to a gang which was occupying the public attention at that time--three men who, in hired or stolen motor cars, had been travelling through Surrey, holding up isolated residences at the point of a pistol, and getting away with as much portable property as they could lay their hands upon.