"When we part, directly after luncheon. I have guests arriving there to-night--my sister and Grantham, and I believe some others. But after my talk with Borden, or rather his talk to me, I felt that I must see you." "Well, I've missed you," she confessed frankly. "I seem to have had lots to do, and I have been going to the theatres, and I have quite made up my mind to write a play. But I have missed you.--Shall I go and put on my hat?" "If you will," he answered. "We can talk in the car and at luncheon." The Marquis watched her cross the room and sighed. At thirty-nine, he thought, she was wonderfully young. Her figure was a little more mature, but in all other respects she seemed only to have found poise and assurance with the passing years. He leaned back in his chair almost with a sense of luxury. He was back again in the atmosphere which had kept him young, the atmosphere which unconsciously had hung around him and kept him warm and contented--kept him, too, from looking over the edge into strange places. The room was deliciously feminine, notwithstanding a certain fascinating disorder. There were magazines, Reviews and illustrated papers everywhere in evidence, an open box of cigarettes upon the chimneypiece, an armful of flowers thrown loose upon the table, as well as the roses upon her desk. One of her gloves lay upon a chair by the side of a pile of proofs. It seemed to him that there were some new photographs on the mantelpiece, but his own, in the uniform of his county yeomanry, still occupied the central position. There were songs upon the piano; on the sideboard a silver cocktail shaker, and, as he noticed with a little pang, two glasses. Nevertheless, he sat there waiting in great content until Marcia came in, dressed for the street. She was followed by a servant with some ice upon a tray, and bottles. "Now for my new vice," she exclaimed gaily, taking up the cocktail shaker and half filling it with ice. "You are not going to be obstinate, are you?" "I shall take anything you may give me, with great pleasure," he assured her, a little stiffly. She saw him looking at the second glass, and laughed. "It is Phyllis Grant who is responsible for this," she explained. "She lives in the next flat, you know, and she comes in most days, either before luncheon or before dinner, for an apéritif and a cigarette." The Marquis's face cleared. He drank his cocktail and pronounced it delicious. On the threshold he paused and looked back. "I like your little room, Marcia," he said. "I find it a strange thing to confess, but there is nowhere else in the world where I feel quite as much at home, quite as contented, as I do here."