“Not particularly,” replied Emily. She added after a moment, “Well, to change the subject, what do you think of the Haiti question, the negro question, and the question of the Philippines?” There was no immediate answer to her question, so she went on rather hastily, “Well, well, fiction is much more fun than truth, isn’t it? Atrocities are delicious to make up. And everyone with a great enthusiasm or a grievance lies. I met a negro called Erle Takka, who said that United States Marines strip the houses of Haitian widows and orphans and then, while they starve, stand around and prick them with bayonets to make them dance. Too frightful, don’t you think, and too interesting, but—at least to a prosaic European ear—hardly likely. Up to now not a single deputation to Washington on the subject of Haiti has crossed my lips. Perhaps all this is rather superfluous....” “It is rather,” said Rhoda. “It is very,” said Mrs. Ponting. “I never heard such talk. Haiti indeed.... Whoever heard of atrocities in Haiti?” Emily was standing now and, with a feeling of desolation, Edward Williams watched her putting on a hat rather like Napoleon’s. She was nervously arranging her clothes. She felt that she had been talking too much. She had a curious lapse into humility and talked in a little frightened undertone to herself. “I expect my hair needs tidying awfully ... it’s a tragedy that all lockets hang face downward ... my bag ... her name is Esther.” It had been a silly party. Everybody felt that—even Edward, though the party had left him a changed man. No room could be anything but dramatic to him after seven cocktails, but he realised now that the party had been silly, and that a pillar of thin air against a background of Rhoda’s pictures was an inadequate substitute for Emily. For Emily was gone. Edward reminded himself that he could walk perfectly straight if he concentrated. He reached Rhoda successfully. “Must home,” he said first by mistake and then concentrated again. “I must be going home. By the way, I may change my mind about the Orient. Too far. Too sudden. I’ll think it over.” His own voice sounded to him very indefinite and he seemed to himself to have been talking for a long time without getting anything said. “I’ll tell you what,” he added intensely, “I’ll think it over.” One of the most fascinating results of seven Gin-Old-Fashioneds is the disappearance of intervals between events. Before Edward R. Williams had time to think another thought, there he was looking down a precipice of street at a deliciously small Emily a hundred feet below. San Francisco streets often nose-dive like this. The grass grows between their cobblestones because nobody dares to use them except pulley cars and persons with very strong ankles. Emily was walking gingerly down. Beside her, plucking protectively but ineffectually at her sleeve, was Banner Hope.