Shedding his coat and hat and taking a ticket from a flunkey, on whose chest there was a line of ribbons, he looked across the long vista of intervening space to the dining room. The band was playing “Avalon” and a buzz of conversation went up in the tobacco smoke. What was the name of that cheery little soul who had dined with him in March, 1914? March, 1914. He had been a happy-go-lucky Captain in the 21st Lancers in those days, drawing a generous allowance from the old man and squeezing every ounce of fun out of life. The years between had brought him up against the sort of realities that he did not care to think about when left without companionship and occupation. Two younger brothers dead and nearly all his pals.—Just as he was about to go down the stairs and be conducted to one of the small tables in the draught he saw a girl in a black cloak with touches of silver on it standing alone, large-eyed, her butter-colored hair gleaming in the light, and caught his breath. “Jumping Joseph,” he said to himself, “look at that,” and was rooted to the floor. It was Lola, as scared as a child in the middle of traffic, a rabbit among a pack of hounds, asking herself, cold and hot by turns, what she had done—oh, what—by coming to that place with no one to look after her, wishing and wishing that the floor would open up and let her into a tunnel which would lead her out to the back room of the nerve-wrung dressmaker. Every passing man who looked her up and down and every woman who turned her head over her shoulder added stone after stone to the pile of her folly, so childish, so laughable, so stupendous. How could she have been such a fool,—the canary so far away from the safety of its cage. Chalfont looked again. “She’s been let down by somebody,” he thought. “What sort of blighter is it who wouldn’t break his neck to be on the steps to meet such a—perfectly——All these cursed eyes, greedily signaling. What’s to be done?”