“George! Oh, it’s you!,” she exclaimed with a throb of relief; and, as she brushed the cloudy hair back from her face, I saw that her big, deep-set eyes were black and anguished. “Who else should it be?,” I asked, as I draped a shawl over her thin shoulders and kissed her flushed cheeks. “They’ve signed, Babs. It’s all over.” “It’s . . . all . . . over?,” she repeated dreamily. “Yes. I telephoned to your mother from the Admiralty. They’re safe: Neave and Charlie.” Silence fell between us until Barbara covered her face and murmured: “Thank God!” Then she sat up and stared round the shadowy room: “What . . . what are we going to do now?” Within an hour I felt that most people would be asking themselves that question: “I don’t know. For this morning Phil Hornbeck suggested that I should invite a few friends to my room in case there’s anything to see. Afterwards . . .” “Afterwards you must take me away!,” she cried. “You’re quite sure there’s been no mistake?” “Quite sure!,” I answered, as I sat down by the telephone and tried to remember which of our friends we should both care to have with us at the moment when peace dawned. A change had overtaken London by the time that I set out to collect my party. As on August bank-holiday four years earlier, when I drove about Gloucestershire, with Loring and O’Rane, waiting for news, the city had an air of suspended animation. Of the twenty strangers who interrogated me on my way across the park, not one had more doubt that the terms would be accepted than that the sun would rise on the morrow. And yet, so nicely balanced were hope and fear, I should have been surprised if any one had laid me long odds on peace. Like Barbara, they were grown used to the war. As I spread the news from house to house, every one said: ‘What time is it now?’; and it seemed as if the eleventh hour of the eleventh day would never come. There was a muddle-headed point of honour, too, that no one should betray even impatience. “Oh, yes, I’ll look in, if I have nothing better to do. You might have called here instead of bringing me to this infernal contraption,” growled my uncle Bertrand, who always visited his hatred of the telephone on the heads of those who addressed him by it. “That all you have to say? Filson! Filson!,” I heard him calling to his man. “They’ve signed!” Lady Dainton, whom I invited for the sake of old associations, murmured: “Thank you so much. I know Roger will be interested,” as though I had announced a minor change in the cabinet. Raymond Stornaway said: “I trust this doesn’t mean a general holiday: I’ve the very devil of a day’s work ahead of me.” My sister Beryl hoped that I had not gone to the expense of buying that new uniform. I had already warned old Lady Loring by telephone; and, when I reached Curzon Street, I found my cousin Violet dressed to go out and playing in the hall with her boy. “I’m waiting to be told what to do next,” was her greeting.