Twenty minutes later he drew up before the retiring little villa with its marigold-tinted curtains. He had by no manner of means decided on his course of action. He could not have told you what he was going to say to Maisie. In this as in so many other ways, he believed himself abnormal. No one had ever told him that ninety-nine out of a hundred married men, if they spoke the truth, would have to confess that they had been unaware thirty seconds before they proposed that they were going to do so; and that the most incredible happening in their lives had been when, thirty seconds later, they had discovered that not only had they proposed, but that they had been riotously accepted. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH SOME PEOPLE FIND THEIR KINGDOMS I He was in the act of shutting off his engine when he heard himself accosted. "I beg your pardon, but are you, Mr. Gervis?" It was a pleasant voice--a man's. Keeping his eyes on what he was doing, Tabs answered in the negative. Then he recalled that Gervis had been the name of Maisie's second husband. "If it's the Gervis who used to live here," he indicated the house with a jerk of his head, "I'm afraid you won't find him. He's been dead these three years--killed at the Front." A quiet chuckle greeted this piece of information, followed by a hearty, "Thank the Lord." Tabs had finished what he was doing. As he stepped out of the car, he threw a contemptuous glance at the man who could be so callous. He was a slightly built, fresh-complexioned young fellow of middle height, with amiable gray eyes and a fair, closely-trimmed mustache. He belonged to the demobilized subaltern type and had the weary, drawn expression of over-strained nerves that so many young faces had at that time. He was dressed in a smartly fitting suit of striped navy-blue flannel and carried himself with the plucky alertness of a highly bred fox-terrier. He had a clean and gallant bearing which it was difficult to reconcile with the ungenerosity of his last remark. In a neat, unforceful way he would have been handsome, had it not been for a badly healed scar which ran straight across his forehead, only just escaping his eyes. Before Tabs could say anything, he was apologizing. "That sounded rotten. I'm sorry. But you see, I didn't know the chap. It's his wife that I'm trying to find. She was married to a man named Pollock when I knew her. I was rather a pal of Pollock's, belonged to the same squadron and was shot down at the same time. I've been a prisoner in Germany. Just got back, in fact. As you'll understand, I'm rather out of touch. I thought you'd be able to tell me whether she still lived here."