"Well--I ought, of course, to have told you before," she answered. "But he's such a good friend of ours, you know." Good friend. All the suspicions I held regarding him flashed across my mind. Why had he pretended to be an invalid on that day I had sat at his bedside, and yet afterwards had dined at Hatchett's? Why was he ever inquisitive regarding our secret experiments, and why did he appear to possess such unusual knowledge of coming events? "Yes," I remarked after a pause. "He is, no doubt, a good friend." I saw that I could learn more by disarming suspicion than by appearing ungenerous. "You don't mind me going to a _matinee_ with him, do you, Claude?" she asked frankly. "Of course, if it has annoyed you, I won't go again. But mother said she thought a theatre would be a pleasant relaxation for me, now that we can't go out at night on account of the darkened streets and the bad winter weather." "The darkened streets seem to make no difference to pleasure-going," I said bitterly, and purposely disregarding her first question. "Though we are at war--though thousands upon thousands of our poor brave fellows have been killed or maimed in the defence of their homes and their loved ones, yet the London public are still the same. Nothing seems to disturb them. Bond Street, with all its fripperies, is still in full swing: the drapers everywhere are paying big dividends--money is being squandered in luxuries by those who have never previously known such things; jewellers are flourishing, and extravagance runs riot through the land. Men and women go nightly to revues and join in rollicking choruses, even while the death-rattle sounds in the throats of Britain's bravest sons. Ah! Roseye," I said. "It is all too awful. What I fear is that we are riding gaily for a fall." "No," she said. "I agree in a sense with all you say. But we are not riding for a fall, so long as we have brave men ready to sacrifice their lives in Britain's cause. You, Claude, are one of those," she added, looking straight into my face with an open, frank expression--that love-look which can never be feigned, either by man or by woman. In that second I realised that at least my suspicion that she had any secret affection for Lionel Eastwell was groundless. Yet I was, nevertheless, annoyed that he should still mislead her parents by expressions of friendship. True, when I came to examine and to analyse my doubts, I could discover no real and actual foundation for them. Perhaps it was an intuition that possessed me--a strange half-formed belief that Eastwell, though such a cheerful companion, such a real good fellow, and so popular with all the flying-boys, was not exactly of the truly patriotic type which he represented himself to be. For that reason alone I inwardly objected to Roseye associating with him, yet as he was such a warmly welcomed friend of the family, it was extremely difficult for me to move in any antagonistic spirit.