'You here again!' he exclaimed in tones of grave censure, as he laid down his hat on the top of the red-leather book on the little table. He blew on the book first, to make sure it was not dusty. Peggy smiled, and Airey relit his pipe. Tommy walked across and looked at the _débris_ of the loaf. He shook his head when Peggy offered him tea. A sudden idea seemed to occur to him. 'I'm awfully glad to find you here,' he remarked to her. 'It saves me going up to your place, as I meant. I've got some people dining to-night, and one of them's failed. I wonder if you'd come? I know it's a bore coming again so soon, but----' 'I haven't been since Saturday.' 'But it would get me out of a hole.' He spoke in humble entreaty. 'I'd come directly, but I'm engaged.' Tommy looked at her sorrowfully, and, it must be added, sceptically. 'Engaged to dinner and supper,' averred Peggy with emphasis as she pulled her hat straight and put on her gloves. 'You wouldn't even look in between the two and--and have an ice with us?' 'I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.' 'Oh, chuck one of them. You might, for once!' 'Impossible! I'm dining with my oldest friend,' smiled Peggy. 'I simply can't.' She turned to Airey, giving him her hand with a laugh. 'I like you best, because you just let me----' Both words and laughter died away; she stopped abruptly, looking from one man to the other. There was something in their faces that arrested her words and her merriment. She could not analyse what it was, but she saw that she had made both of them uncomfortable. They had guessed what she was going to say; it would have been painful to one of them, and the other knew it. But whom had she wounded--Tommy by implying that his hospitality was importunate and his kindness clumsy, or Airey by a renewed reference to his poverty as shown in the absence of pressing invitations from him? She could not tell; but a constraint had fallen on them both. She cut her farewell short and went away, vaguely vexed and penitent for an offence which she perceived but did not understand. The two men stood listening a moment to her light footfall on the stairs. 'It's all a lie, you know,' said Tommy. 'She isn't engaged to dinner or to supper either. It's beastly, that's what it is.' 'Yours was all a lie too, I suppose?' Airey spoke in a dull hard voice. 'Of course it was, but I could have beaten somebody up in time, or said they'd caught influenza, or been given a box at the opera, or something.' Airey sat down by the fireplace, his chin sunk on his necktie. He seemed unhappy and rather ashamed. Tommy glanced at him with a puzzled look, shook his head, and then broke into a smile--as though, in the end, the only thing for it was to be amused. Then he drew a long envelope from his pocket.