“Stuff!” snapped Masters. “She’s been crying. Out you go.” Suddenly Iris said in that enormous, preserved voice: “I have not been crying.” Masters, whose great brown coat filled the whole side of the bed, so that I was nowhere, looked down at her like a worried bird.... “I’d like,” she pleaded, “to say good-bye ... to this gentleman, if you would kindly ... get out of the way for a minute....” And when I bent over the wasted hand, from which the emerald ring now hung like a hoop, she said: “Ah, that defiant courtesy! Thank you, my dear. And good-bye for ever as ever is, for I don’t suppose I shall ever come back to England again ... nevermore, nevermore. And,” she whispered, “I will keep my promise....” CHAPTER NINE: TALKING OF HATS I That was on the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well. Now those who are sensitive to any extreme condition of our climate will not have forgotten that towards the end of July of the year 1923 there was a week or ten days when the heat in London was so oppressive that frequent complaints were made at the confectioners and Soda Fountains on the ground that their ices were warm; nor were the nights less uncomfortable--“uncomfortable,” that is, to quote from a gentleman who wrote to _The Times_ about it, “in a country so unprepared for any extreme of temperature that, if I do not seem too fanciful, on a cold winter’s day there is nothing warm but the drinking-water and on a hot summer’s day nothing cool but the sun.” Of course he did seem too fanciful, but, however that may be, the nights were certainly stifling, and one in particular I remember very well. It was towards eleven o’clock, and Hilary, Guy and I, having sat long over dinner upstairs at the Café Royal, were returning towards our homes down Piccadilly, walking as slowly as we might for the prodigious heat. We had, however, barely touched the corner of Saint James’s Street when Guy ceased even to pretend that he was walking, and said: “Just a moment, will you, while I go into White’s to see if Napier’s there, to remind him about dinner to-morrow night.” But Guy never in his life looked less like running, and Hilary said: “The idea of eating in this weather! Hm. And what is this party, Guy?” “Children’s party,” said Guy, whose frozen blue eyes might conceivably have made one feel cool had one only been tall enough to be able to look into them ... and just at that moment, as Guy turned away, and the three of us facing down towards the Palace, Napier came swiftly down the steps of White’s, about ten yards down. At the curb a taxi was waiting, its door swung open. “Naps! Napier!” Guy called, thinking to catch him with as little exertion as possible in that stifling heat. But Napier, swift as a shadow, that greyhound of a Napier, was already in the taxi, the door was slammed-to, and round it swept by the Devonshire Club to turn northwards up the slope of Piccadilly.