But his flirtation with Doreen ended tonight by the sudden--and, he must admit it, sensible action of the girl’s parents. They had simply left the boarding-house during the day, while he was doing his duty as Secretary to the Knapsack Club. Ursula had broken the news to him while they were dressing for dinner. “And play up to me at dinner, Doug, and afterwards. All those hateful intimate _strangers_ looking on, and they’ve nothing else to be excited about, most of them.” He knew she detested the boarding-house. They had only moved into it when the seven years’ lease of their flat had expired, while they had hunted for another. But somehow the hunting had become desultory. Doug declared that he did not want to anchor himself again; the old rover mood was once more upon him--so they had stayed for nearly twelve months at the boarding-house. For presently had come Doreen Jones, and he had talked to her about the glorious adventure of having no anchorage, but obeying an invisible call to the South Seas or to Persia, just the very instant it sounded. He talked to her--as, perhaps, he had once talked to the little schoolgirl Ursula Maxwell. His own sister, Gwen, was at Regina Hall with Ursula, and had coaxed her big brother, just home from a trip to Chile, to come to the annual fancy-dress dance. Among the cowgirls, Pierrettes and Dutch peasants, was a glowing, radiant Cinderella, in faded rags certainly, and carrying a broom, but behaving with a wild abandon very far from the original modest and obedient maiden of the fairy-tale. Ursula, indeed, was wildly over-excited. Tonight, at any rate, she would retrieve the humiliation of her one previous attempt to “sparkle in the throng”.... Tonight there was no question of making a fool of herself, even had Nina been there to say so. Success was like a rush of wine in her blood; she danced--well, Miss Luther had frequently to speak a few low, restraining words in her ear. The other girls swarmed round her, begging to introduce their brothers and cousins. Each hair of the gold which tumbled over her shoulders and down her back seemed to stand out and quiver with a separate vitality. There was no reason for all this--except for the stinging remembrance that she had come to the last day of her last term, and tomorrow ... she would be going back home, back to the Laburnums for good, to share a bedroom with Nina and sit at table with the family and Aunt Lavvy and Gums; with Aunt Lavvy and Gums and the family.... And she had never been popular with them since that unfortunate affair of the room. [II]