He called at the Victoria Street flat at twelve o’clock. The austere Myra looked on him disapprovingly. Tea-time was the visiting time for stray young men, and even then she conveyed to them the impression that she let them in on sufferance. “What name?” she asked. “Mr. Triona.” “Miss Gale is in, sir,” she admitted grudgingly, having received explicit orders from Olivia, “but she is dressing and I don’t know whether she can see you.” “Will you tell Miss Gale that I am entirely at her service, and if it’s inconvenient for her to see me now I’ll call later.” Myra left him standing in the little vestibule and gave the message to Olivia, who, fully dressed, was polishing her nails in her bedroom. “You’re the most impossible woman on earth,” Olivia declared, turning on her. “Is that the way you would treat a man who had delivered you from a dragon?” “I don’t hold with men and I don’t hold with dragons,” replied Myra unmoved. “The next time you’ll be wanting me to fall over a dragon who has delivered you from a man!” Olivia scarcely listened to the retort. She flew out and carried the waiting Triona into the sitting-room. “I’m so sorry. My maid’s a terror. She bites and doesn’t bark. But I guarantee her non-venomous. How good of you to come so early.” “I was anxious,” said Triona. “About what?” “Last night must have been a shock.” “Of course it was,” she laughed; “but not enough to keep me all day long in fainting fits with doctors and smelling-bottles.” “I hope you slept all right.” “No,” she replied frankly. “That I didn’t do. The adventure was a bit too exciting. Besides——” “Besides what?” “It came into my head to make up my moral balance sheet. Figures of arithmetic always send me to sleep; but figures of—well, of that kind of thing, don’t you know—keep me broad awake.” Olivia’s dark, eager face was of the kind that shows the traces of fatigue in faint shadows under the eyes. He swiftly noted them and cried out: “You’re dead tired. It’s damnable.” He rose, suddenly angry. “You ought to go to bed at once. Your maid was right. I had no business to come at this hour and disturb you.” “If you hadn’t come,” said Olivia, inwardly glowing at the tribute paid by the indignant youth, “I should have imagined that you looked on last night’s affair as a trumpery incident in the day’s work and went to bed and forgot all about it.” “That’s impossible,” said he. “I, too, haven’t slept a wink.” She met and held his eyes longer than she, or anyone else, had held them. Then, half angrily, she felt her cheeks grow hot and red. “For you, who have faced death a hundred times, last night, as I’ve just said, must be even dull. What was it to the night when you—you know—the sentry—when you were unarmed and you fought with him and you killed him with his own bayonet?”