As soon as the shop was opened and Mrs. Breezy was on duty and John Breezy was humming softly over his most monotonous job, Lola went upstairs to the little bedroom which she had completely outgrown now, put on her hat and presently slipped out of the house. All the usual musicians were already at work on the curbstone of Queen’s Road. The strains of “Annie Laurie” were mixed with those of “Son o’ Mine” and there was one daring creature with a concertina who was desecrating Gounod’s “Ave Maria.” Perambulators cluttered the pavements and eager housewives were in earnest conversation with butchers and greengrocers who had arranged their wares temptingly outside their shops so that they could be handled and considered and sampled. Lola made her way to Kensington Gardens filled with a desire which had been growing upon her ever since she woke up to make another Cinderella dash into the great world. She was seized with another overpowering eagerness to meet Fallaray on his own level. He was to be in town over the week-end. She knew that. The Government, as though it had not already enough troubles to contend with—Germany haggling and France ready to fly at her throat and America hiding her head in the sand of dead shibboleths like an ostrich—was in the throes of the big strike and its members were hurrying from one conference to another with the labor leaders. Lady Feo away, she had a wonderful chance to use that night and nothing would be easier than to dress once more at Mrs. Rumbold’s and slip into her mother’s house with a latchkey. But she was not able to go into the Gardens because they had been closed to the public. They had been turned over to the military to be used as a center for the mobilization of supplies. She could see men in khaki everywhere, going about their work with a sort of merry energy. “Back to the army agin, Sergeant, back to the army agin.” Unconcerned by the crisis which had fallen upon England and unable to wander along her favorite paths, she turned away just at the moment when a large car, followed by a line of motor busses and heterogeneous traffic, was being held up by a policeman to enable a company of boy scouts to cross the high road. She heard a shout. She saw a man in khaki with a red band round his cap and much brass on its peak and two long lines of ribbons on his chest become suddenly athletic under the stress of great excitement. The next instant her hand was seized and she looked up. It was Chalfont. “I was just going to think about you,” she said. “I’ve never stopped thinking of you,” said Chalfont. “What became of you? Where did you go? Where have you been? I searched every hotel in the town. I’ve been almost through every street, like Gilbert à Beckett, calling your name. Good God, why have you played with me like this?”