"I can't keep away from the old place. Every night we used to come here and--" The recollection was too much for him; he could do nothing but point mutely to the half-bottle. "That makes you think," he said, at last. "After the dozens of bottles we've had together, to come down to that beastly little dwarf alone." "And you've failed in your examination, too?" inquired Dorothy, tenderly rubbing it in. "Just as well, Doodles, just as well. I should be afraid to attach myself even to an embassy at present." The band struck up the music of the Pink Quartet. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "This is too much. Here, Carlo, Ponto, Rover--What's your name?" The waiter leaned over obsequiously. "Here, take this fiver with my compliments to Herr Rumpelstiltzkin and ask him to cut out that tune and give us the 'Dead March' instead." "Why not the 'Wedding March'?" asked Dorothy, maliciously. "I give you my solemn word of honor," said Lonsdale, "that if only Queenie--well, I think I can get up this hill on the top speed--if I were the first, I _would_ marry Queenie. You know, I'm beginning to think Tony made rather an ass of himself, buzzing off like that to Basutoland or wherever it is. By the way, has it ever struck you what an anomaly--that's a good word--I got that word out of a _précis_ at my crammer's. It's a splendid word and can be used in summer and winter with impunity, what? Has it ever struck you what an anomaly it is that you can get a license to shoot big game and drive a car, but that you can't get a license to shoot Hausbergs? Well, well, if Queenie had your past and your own future and could cut out some of the presents, by Jove! I would marry her. I really would." Dorothy said to herself that she had always liked Arthur Lonsdale in spite of everything, and when he asked her now if her friends were not waiting for her she told him that they could wait and gratified the forsaken one by sitting down at his table. "Of course, when Queenie and I parted," he went on, "she made it absolutely clear to me that this fellow Hausberg meant nothing to her; in fact, between ourselves, she rather gave me to understand that things might go on as they were. But you know, hang it! I can't very well do that sort of thing. The funny thing is that the more I refuse, the more keen she gets. I mean to say it is ridiculous, really, because of course she can't be very much in love with _me_. To begin with, well, she's about twice my height, what? No, I think I shall have to go in for motor-cars. They used to be nearly as difficult to manage as women not so long ago, but they seem to be answering to civilization much more rapidly. It's a pity somebody can't blow along with some invention to improve women. Skidding all over the place, don't you know, as they do now ... but I cannot understand why Hausberg should have fixed on Queenie. I always thought he was after you, and I'm not sure he isn't. Did you turn him down?"