He answered, "No"; and spoke the truth. On that night at Eze he had not foreseen the outcome of his swift return, of his irruption into the gaily lighted room murmurous with the sea. On that night he had revealed himself to Millie, and the revelation had been the beginning of love in her rather than its resumption. This he had come to understand, and, understanding, could reply with truth that he did not miss the Legion as he had thought he would. There were moments, no doubt, when the sound of a bugle on a still morning would stir him to a sense of loss, and he would fall to dreaming of Tavernay and Barbier, and his old comrades, and the menacing silence of the Sahara. At times, too, the yapping of dogs in the street would call up vividly before his mind the picture of some tent village in Morocco where he had camped. Or the wind roaring amongst trees on a night of storm would set his mind wondering whether the ketch _Perseverance_ was heading to the white-crested rollers, close-reefed between the Dogger and the Fisher Banks; and for a little while he would feel the savour of the brine sharp upon his lips, and longing would be busy at his heart--for the Ishmaelite cannot easily become a stay-at-home. These, however, were but the passing moods. Of one other character who took an important if an unobtrusive part in shaping the fortunes of the Truants a final word may be said. A glimpse of that man, of the real man in him, was vouchsafed to Warrisden two summers later. It happened that Warrisden attended a public dinner which was held in a restaurant in Oxford Street. He left the company before the dinner was over, since he intended to fetch his wife Pamela, who was on that June evening witnessing a performance of "Rigoletto" at the Opera House in Covent Garden. Warrisden rose from the table and slipped out, as he thought at eleven o'clock, but on descending into the hall he found that he had miscalculated the time. It was as yet only a quarter to the hour, and having fifteen minutes to spare, he determined to walk. The night was hot; he threw his overcoat across his arm, and turning southwards out of Oxford Street, passed down a narrow road in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane. In those days, which were not, after all, so very distant from our own, the great blocks of model dwellings had not been as yet erected; squalid courts and rookeries opened on to ill-lighted passages; the houses had a ruinous and a miserable look. There were few people abroad as Warrisden passed through the quarter, and his breast-plate of white shirt-front made him a conspicuous figure. He had come about half the way from Oxford Street when he saw two men suddenly emerge from the mouth of a narrow court a few yards in front of him. The two men were speaking, or rather shouting, at one another; and from the violence of their gestures no less than from the abusive nature of the language which they used, it was plain that they were quarrelling. Words and