Nevertheless ... if she could only see his eyes ... he turned his full profile ... she had never glanced at Gathbroke's profile; he had given her no opportunity! ... Certainly she had not the faintest idea whether the man of the embassy had had a snub nose or the thin straight feature of this man who would have attracted her attention in any ease if only because he did not carry his shoulders with the disillusioning obliquity of the British Army ... why did he not turn round? Alexina felt an impulse to throw her cup straight across the room at the back of that well-shaped head. Suddenly he shook hands with his host, nodded to the others and left the room. III Alexina set her cup and saucer down on the table, forebore to interrupt her hostess, who was known to talk steadily in order to avoid questions, and walked quickly and deliberately out after him. It is a primitive instinct in woman to chase the male; but civilization having initiated her into the art of permitting him to chase her, Alexina was merely bent upon giving this man his chance if the interest had been mutual and existed beyond the moment. One lift was descending as she reached the outer corridor and the other was closed. She ran down the wide staircase as rapidly as a woman in fashionable skirts may. There was no British uniform in the hall below. IV She stood for a quarter of an hour under the arcade before the Crillon waiting for a taxi, staring out into the dreary mist of rain, at the round soft blurs of light in the Place de la Concorde, but in no wise depressed. What did it matter if she had not met him to-day? The conviction that she should meet him before long was as strong as if she were ever hopeful sixteen.... That was the real secret of her elation. She felt very young and entirely carefree. She reflected that if she had met Gathbroke, or whoever he might be, during the last three years of the war she would have felt neither joy nor elation, however interested she might have been. To love and dream and enjoy when men were falling every minute, writhing in agony, gasping out their life, would have seemed to her grossly unæsthetic if nothing worse. It was not in the picture. The primal impulses she had experienced at the front to that harsh music of Death's orchestra were natural enough; but safe (comparatively!) in Paris, certainly quiet, the romance of love would have been as incongruous and heartless as to go out to the great hospital at Neuilly and tango through a ward of dying men. But now! She had done her part. She could do no more. Men still must die, but in every comfort, with every consolation. And there would be no more recruits. She was free. She was young, young, young again.