notice, Julie. Even now I should hate to see
you look like that, say, at Donovan. You do it too well. Oh, here's the
tea. Praise the Lord! I'm dying for a cup. You can have all the cakes;
I've smoked too much."

"Wouldn't you prefer a whisky?"

"No, not now--afterwards. What's that they're playing?"

They listened, Julie seemingly intent, and Peter, who soon gave up the
attempt to recognise the piece, glanced sideways at the couple on the
lounge. They did not notice him. He took them both in and caught--he
could not help it--a few words.

She was thirty-five, he guessed, slightly made-up, but handsome and full
figured, a woman of whom any man might have been proud. He was an
officer, in Major's uniform, and he was smoking a cigarette impatiently
and staring down the lounge. She, on the other hand, had her eyes fixed
on him as if to read every expression on his face, which was heavy and
sullen and mutinous.

"Is that final, then, George?" she said.

"I tell you I can't help it; I promised I'd dine with Carstairs
to-night."

A look swept across her face. Peter could not altogether read it. It was
not merely anger, or pique, or disappointment; it certainly was not
merely grief. There was all that in it, but there was more. And she
said--he only just caught the sentence of any of their words, but there
was the world of bitter meaning in it:

"Quite alone, I suppose? And there will be no necessity for me to sit
up?"

"Peter," said Julie suddenly, "the tea's cold. Take me upstairs, will
you? we can have better sent up."

He turned to her in surprise, and then saw that she too had heard and
seen.

"Right, dear," he said, "It is beastly stuff. I think, after all, I'd
prefer a spot, and I believe you would too."

He rose carefully, not looking towards the lounge, like a man; and Julie
got up too, glancing at that other couple with such an ordinary merely
interested look that Peter smiled to himself to see it. They threaded
their way in necessary silence through the tables and chairs to the
doors, and said hardly a word in the lift. But in their sitting-room,
cosy as ever, Julie turned to him in a passion of emotion such as he had
scarcely dreamed could exist even in her.

"Oh, you darling," she said, "pick me up, and sit me in that chair on
your knee. Love me, Peter, love me as you've never loved me before. Hold
me tight, tight, Peter hurt me, kiss me, love me, say you love me..." and
she choked her own utteran