And so, scarcely had the last reverberation of Bude’s measured gonging died away than the French window leading from the lounge-hall on to the terrace was pushed open and two of Hartley Parrish’s guests emerged from the falling darkness without into the pleasant comfort of the firelit room. They were an oddly matched pair. The one was a tubby little man with short bristly grey hair and a short bristly grey moustache to match. His stumpy legs looked ridiculous in his baggy golf knickers of rough tweed, which he wore with gaiters extending half-way up his short, stout calves. As he came in, he slung off the heavy tweed shooting-cloak he had been wearing and placed it with his Homburg hat on a chair. This was Dr. Romain, whose name thus written seems indecently naked without the string of complementary initials indicative of the honours and degrees which years of bacteriological research had heaped upon him. His companion was a tall, slim, fair-haired young man, about as good a specimen of the young Englishman turned out by the English public school as one could find. He was extremely good-looking with a proud eye and finely chiselled features, but the suggestion of youth in his face and figure was countered by a certain poise, a kind of latent seriousness which contrasted strangely with the general cheery _insouciance_ of his type. A soldier would have spotted the symptoms at once, “Five years of war!” would have been his verdict—that long and strange entry into life of so many thousands of England’s manhood which impressed the stamp of premature seriousness on all those who came through. And Captain Sir Horace Trevert, Bart., D.S.O., had gone from his famous school straight into a famous regiment, had won his decoration before he was twenty-one, and been twice wounded into the bargain. “Where’s everybody?” queried the doctor, rubbing his hands at the blazing log-fire. “Robin and Mary went off to play billiards,” said the young man, “and I left old Parrish after lunch settling down for an afternoon’s work in the library ...” He crossed the room to the fire and stood with his back to the flame. “What a worker that man is!” ejaculated the doctor. “He had one of his secretaries down this morning with a car full of portfolios, blue-prints, specifications, and God knows what else. Parrish polished the whole lot off and packed the fellow back to London before mid-day. Some of Hornaway’s people who were waiting went in next, and he was through with them by lunch-time!” Trevert wagged his head in admiration. “And he told me he wanted to have a quiet week-end!” he said. “That’s why he has no secretary living in the house.” “A quiet week-end!” repeated Romain drily. “Ye gods!” “He’s a marvel for work,” said the young man.