Now I have read in books about people “sailing” into places, and I suppose Iris came into the deserted Bar like that. Hilary must have been just behind her, for I heard his voice, but I only saw Iris, and I remember how she seemed to hold the white ermine round her with one clenched hand, and how the great emerald shone like a green fly on the soft, soft white. And the tawny curls danced their formal dance on her cheeks as she came towards us, swiftly, oh swiftly, saying, in that suddenly strong, clear voice: “Oh, Guy ... and friend of Gerald! Will you help me, dear friend? I want to go round to see Gerald, and Hilary says you still have the key of the house. I went hours ago, but I could get no answer at the door. I wonder, would you come with me?” “Iris,” said Guy sternly, and I remember the way she threw back her head to look at him, and I thought again of the queer, unconscious way she had of always meeting men on their own ground. “Why don’t you ever look up your old friends when you’re in London, Iris? Or aren’t we your old friends? Or is that fine representative English gentleman, Colonel Duck, your old friend? Answer me yes or no.” “Oh, Guy!” she said softly, sadly. “I wouldn’t have you be a humbug. I wouldn’t have you and Hilary be humbugs--you two, out of all the world.” “But, honest, Iris, I’d like to see you. Ask Hilary. ‘Where’s that girl got to?’ I asks, and he says ‘hm,’ says he, if you see what I mean.” “Whereas I, Guy, have learnt not to regret old friends. I’ve become an old woman on my travels, and one of the first things an old woman must learn is that the best way to keep old friends is not to see them, for then you can at least keep the illusion that they are friends ... which is, perhaps, a little different from being ‘old friends’....” “Iris, don’t be so bitter!” snapped Hilary. That, I thought, came rather well from Hilary. Just at that moment a woman screamed from the swimming-bath, there was a resounding splash. Guy was saying: “You’d better take Gerald away for a while, Iris.” “If he’ll only come,” she said, “that’s what I want to do....” I remember thinking just then that I mustn’t forget to thank her for that beautiful notepaper, and also to ask her what was that last word in her note. “I’ve got an idea,” Hilary was saying, in the specially detached voice he keeps for ideas, “that now we _are_ in this foul night-club we might as well do a bit of good. There’s old Pollen upstairs, and we might ... hm, well, perhaps not.” “Perhaps not what, Hilary?” “Hm. I was thinking of Eve seeing the thing in to-morrow morning’s papers. She only reads one wretched picture-paper, and that’s Pollen’s, so I thought, hm, that if we asked him not to....” “Eve, the poor darling!” Iris whispered. We seemed to be in a desert, three shadows of men, three shadows of voices, and Iris, very white and alight. That is how I always remember her, alight.