me an exceedingly
popular subaltern was holding the stage amid roars of laughter. They
stood outside one of the many glass doors and peered in.

Once inside, one had to make one's way among beds and chairs, and the
nature of things brought one into rather more than the usual share of
late-comers' scrutiny, but nothing could abash Donovan. He spotted at
once a handsome woman in nurse's indoor staff uniform, and made for her.
She, with two others, was sitting on an empty bed, and she promptly made
room for Donovan. Graham was introduced, and a quiet girl moved up a bit
for him to sit down; but there was not much room, and the girl would not
talk, so that he sat uncomfortably and looked about him, listening with
one ear to the fire of chaff on his right. Donovan was irrepressible. His
laugh and voice, and the fact that he was talking to a hospital
personage, attracted a certain amount of attention. Peter tried to smile,
but he felt out of it and observed. He stared up towards the band, which
was just striking up again.

Suddenly he became conscious, as one will, that someone was particularly
looking at him. He glanced back over the chairs, and met a pair of eyes,
roguish, laughing, and unquestionably fixed upon him. The moment he saw
them, their owner nodded and telegraphed an obvious invitation. Peter
glanced at Donovan: he had not apparently seen. He looked back; the eyes
called him again. He felt himself getting hot, for, despite the fact that
he had a kind of feeling that he had seen those eyes before, he was
perfectly certain he did not know the girl. Perhaps she had made a
mistake. He turned resolutely to his companion.

"Jolly good band, isn't it?" he said.

"Yes," she replied.

"But I suppose at a hospital like this you're always hearing decent
music?" he ventured.

"Not so often," she said.

"This band is just back from touring the front, isn't it? My friend said
something to that effect."

"I believe so," she said.

Peter could have cursed her. It was impossible to get anything out of
her, though why he had not a notion. The answer was really simple, for
she wanted to be next Donovan, and wasn't, and she was all the while
scheming how to get there. But Peter did not tumble to that; he felt an
ass and very uncomfortable, and he broke into open revolt.

He looked steadily towards the chairs. The back of the girl who had
looked at him was towards him now, for she was talking sideways to
somebody; but he