bly compelled by the man sitting
opposite to me, the only other occupant of my table. At first I
thought of asking him not to stare at me so rudely, and then I found
that he was not looking at me but over my shoulder at some object at
the end of the room. I can resist the appeal of three hundred people
gazing into the sky at the same moment, but the intense concentration
of this man was too much for me. I turned round. Seeing nothing
unusual I turned back again, but it was too late. My sugar had
gone! No trace of it anywhere, except in the bubbles that winked
suspiciously on the surface of the miscreant's tea.

His face did not belong to any of the known criminal types. It was a
pale, dreamy, garden-suburb sort of face--a face you couldn't possibly
give in charge, except, perhaps, under the Military Service Acts.

"Do you know," I said to him, "that you have just committed one of the
most terrible offences open to civilised mankind--a crime even worse
(Heaven help me if I exaggerate) than trampling on an allotment?"

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he replied, waking from his dream. "Did you want that
sugar? You know, you seemed to be getting on very well without it."

As I could not believe him to be beyond the reach of pity, I explained
my method to him, describing as harrowingly as I could the joy of
those first few moments after the declaration of peace. I suggested to
him that he might sometimes find it useful himself, if ever he should
be compelled to sit at an unoccupied table. ("_Touche_," he murmured,
raising his hat). "And now," I concluded, "as I have told you my
system, perhaps you will tell me yours--not for imitation, but for
avoidance."

"There is very little to tell," he replied sorrowfully, "but it is
tragic enough. All my life I have been fond of sugar. Before the war
I took always nine lumps to a cup of tea. (It was my turn to raise
my hat.) By a severe course of self-repression I have reduced it to
seven, but I cannot get below that. I have given up the attempt. There
are a hundred cures for the drink habit; there is not one for the
sugar habit. As I cannot repress the desire, I have had to put all my
energy into getting hold of sugar. I noticed some time ago that at
these restaurants they give the sugar allowance to all customers who
ask for tea or coffee, although perhaps twenty per cent. of them do
not take sugar at all. It is these people who supply me with the extra
sugar I need. In your case it was an ho