is Alick Craven."

At this moment Craven joined them. Seeing Miss Van Tuyn standing still
with a certain obstinacy he came up and took her hand.

"Nice to meet you again," he said.

Braybrooke thought of Miss Van Tuyn's remark about the Foreign Office
manner, and hoped Craven was going to be at his best that evening. It
seemed to him that there was a certain dryness in the young people's
greeting. Miss Van Tuyn was looking lovely, and almost alarmingly
youthful and self-possessed, in a white dress. Craven, fresh from his
successes at golf, looked full of the open-air spirit and the robustness
of the galloping twenties. In appearance the two were splendidly
matched. The faint defiance which Braybrooke thought he detected
in their eyes suited them both, giving to them just a touch of the
arrogance which youth and health render charming, but which in old
people is repellent and ugly. They wore it like a feather set at just
the right rakish angle in a cap. Nevertheless, this slight dryness must
be got rid of if the evening were to be a success, and Braybrooke
set himself to the task of banishing it. He talked of golf. Like many
American girls, Miss Van Tuyn was at home in most sports and games.
She was a good whip, a fine skater and lawn tennis player, had shot and
hunted in France, liked racing, and had learnt to play golf on the
links at Cannes when she was a girl of fifteen. But to-night she was not
enthusiastic about golf, perhaps because Craven was. She said it was an
irritating game, that playing it much always gave people a worried look,
that a man who had sliced his first drive was a bore for the rest of the
day, that a woman whom you beat in a match tried to do you harm as long
as you and she lived. Finally she said it was certainly a fine game, but
a game for old people. Craven protested, but she held resolutely to
her point. In other games--except croquet, which she frankly loathed in
spite of its scientific possibilities--you moved quickly, were obliged
to be perpetually on the alert. In tennis and lawn tennis, in racquets,
in hockey, in cricket, you never knew what was going to happen, when
you might have to do something, or make a swift movement, a dash here
or there, a dive, a leap, a run. But in golf half your time was spent in
solemnly walking--toddling, she chose to call it--from point to
point. This was, no doubt, excellent for the health, but she preferred
swiftness. But then she was only a light-foote