m highly privileged, I'm sure,"
he said, and could have kicked himself for a stupid ass.

"Oh Lord!" said Julie, with a mock expression of horror; "for goodness'
sake don't talk like that. That's the worst of a parson: he can't forget
the drawing-room. At any rate, I'm not sure that _I'm_ highly fortunate,
but I thought I ought to give Fate a chance. Do you smoke?"

"Yes," said Peter wonderingly.

"Then for goodness' sake smoke, and you'll feel better. No, I daren't
here, but I'm glad you are educated enough to ask me. Nurses aren't
supposed to smoke in public, you know, and I take it that even you have
observed that I'm a nurse."

She was quite right. Peter drew on his cigarette and felt more at
ease. "Well, to be absolutely honest, I had," he said. "And I observe,
moreover, that you are not wearing exactly an English nurse's uniform,
and that you have what I might venture to call a zoological badge. I
therefore conclude that, like my friend Donovan, you hail from South
Africa. What hospital are you in?"

"Quai de France," she said. "Know it?"

Peter repressed a start. "Quai de France?" he queried. "Where's that,
now?"

At this moment a song started, but his companion dropped her voice to
stage whisper and replied: "End of the harbour, near where the leave-boat
starts. Know it now?"

He nodded, but was saved a reply.

She looked away toward the platform, and he studied her face
surreptitiously. It seemed very young till you looked closely, especially
at the eyes, and then you perceived something lurking there. She was
twenty-seven or twenty-eight, he concluded. She looked as if she knew the
world inside out, and as if there were something hidden below the gaiety.
Peter felt curiously and intensely attracted. His shyness vanished. He
had, and had had, no intimations of the doings of Providence, and nobody
could possibly be more sceptical of fate-lines than he, but it dawned on
him as he stared at her that he would fathom that look somehow,
somewhere.

"I'm practically not made up at all," she whispered, without turning her
head, "so for Heaven's sake don't say there's too much powder on my
nose."

Peter shook silently. "No, but a faint trace on the right cheek," he
whispered back. She turned then and looked at him, and her eyes
challenged his. And yet it is to be supposed that Hilda knew nothing
whatever about it.

"'_Right on my mother's knee_....'" sang the platform.

"'_Without a shirt, without a sh