“Sickening,” he murmured. Bus after bus, laden with the people from the theatres, thundered past us and up and down the switchback, embracing us with waves of heat so that one’s very skin felt like a sticky garment.... “Yes,” I said. “London’s all right,” said Guy thoughtfully, “as London....” “Of course,” I said, “as London....” The wide sweep of Hyde Park Corner lay ahead of us like a bright handkerchief in the night. The buses trumpeted across it and around it and down it and up it, but one and all looked as snails beside Bus No. 16, which is beyond compare the fastest bus in London, making the voyage from Grosvenor Place to Hamilton Place and back again at a speed to astonish the eye of man. The din that night makes in closing its doors on London was as though muted by the still, stifling air, and I envied the lofty calm of the Duke of Wellington where he rides for ever amid his pleasaunce of small trees. The lights or Constitution Hill glowed like fire-flies between the leafy valley of the Green Park and the dark gardens of His Majesty the King. “Trouble about London is,” said Guy thoughtfully, “that people are always expecting it to be Paris or Rome or some other place. Always wanting something else, people are....” “Anything,” I agreed, “so long as it’s not their own....” “That’s about it,” Guy murmured. “Sickening....” We thought about that for a while. “Guy, one almost might go down to some part of the river. Near Maidenhead. Now. And swim.” “Haven’t been to Maidenhead,” Guy reflected deeply, “well, it must be ten years. Difficult, isn’t it, to realise it’s almost ten years since that war started? I haven’t been--let me see--not since the night that poor boy got himself drowned....” “Only an hour or so by car,” I said, “and you can relive your youth.” A smile flickered across the stern, small profile. “A long time to waste to relive a wasted youth. What about a game of squash instead? Makes us enjoy a drink. Come along.” And so it came to pass that we bathed quite differently than in the river by playing squash-racquets by electric-light. Guy has a court in the basement of his house, and when he beats you, which is always, he says: “Sickening.” “Where,” I asked, when we had bathed sufficiently and were enjoying long tumblers of the stuff that such good jokes are made from, whilst from upstairs came the faint notes of a piano and a thing they call a saxophone, for Lady de Travest was “throwing” a small party; “where are we dining to-morrow night? And, now I come to think of it, why this sudden children’s party?” Guy had happened on Venice playing tennis the other day, when she had said she was feeling perhaps a little depressed. “The heat,” she had said.... “Whereupon,” said Guy, imitating Cherry-Marvel, “it came to me as not a bad idea if we had a party for the child. Real good girl, Venice. Hope that young man of mine will find some one only half so good....” “Yes,” I said.