"But I haven't met her yet!" I protested actively from my side of the fireplace, in his room in the Beaumont Street nursing home. Influenza had already gripped and released me, so that I was now in an irritatingly robust state of health in which to visit a less fortunate friend who had succumbed to its second wave; for that second wave was more virulent and more treacherous than the first, mocking its victim into partial convalescence and then, with a jeer and a snarl at the ambuscaded wretch, fixing again upon the damaged lungs, so inexorably that there was only the one release. And thus Howard Wentworth, who was thought, even by himself, to have cheated the thing, in the end died; not ten days after that afternoon when I had sat listening to him, as he lounged in the happy _déshabillé_ of convalescence, and was reminiscent about a girl called Fay Richmond. The difference in our years had not prevented an acquaintance ripening into a steady friendship. What I liked about Howard Wentworth was that--unlike so many Englishmen of middle years--he was _not_ young for his age. He was completely, sincerely, and normally over 45, which was so refreshing of him among the crowds of 38's to 42's passing all the way from Coombe to Sunningdale of a Sunday morning.... And it was after our occasional dinners in his house in Upper Brook Street that I would be interested by a solitary photograph in a plain sandal-wood frame; one could not help contrasting its prominence on the grand piano with the total absence of any other photograph in that austere house--austere, in spite of that slight Chinese element of tapestry, strange green horsemen and the like, which even the best of celibates are nowadays growing to affect. I used to wonder, quite shamelessly, who the girl with the sad, sincere face was, and whether my host and she had loved unhappily; for the girl's eyes were large and sad, and the firm set of her young mouth had not tried to obey the exhortation to smile; which must, indeed, have been given very hesitatingly, for there was a frightening sincerity about her face. You felt, looking even upon the poor mockery of a likeness, that you would have to dance very well indeed before you begged the favour of such as she to dance with you. You imagined to yourself fine arrogances behind those young eyes, to attract and appall you in a venturesome moment.... But, of course, I could not ask my host about her, I had to wait; until, on his reported convalescence, I went to see him in Beaumont Street, and I suppose too obviously noticed the sandal-wood frame on the dressing-table. He smiled: "It always seemed to go with me," he said. "And I don't quite know why, as I don't remember ever having made a point of it. But Briggs somehow got into the habit of treating it like a toothbrush, so that it now goes with me even for weekends. I don't think I've even really looked at it for years and years.