, and not be a ninny? Did he take the
Pinkerton press seriously, or did he laugh? Both, probably, like most
journalists. He wouldn't laugh to Lord Pinkerton, or to Lady Pinkerton,
or to Clare. But he might laugh to Jane, when she showed him he might.
Jane, eating jam sandwiches, looking like a chubby school child, with her
round face and wide eyes and bobbed hair and cotton frock, watched the
beautiful young man with her solemn unwinking stare that disconcerted
self-conscious people, while Lady Pinkerton talked to him about some
recent fiction.

On Sunday, people came over to lunch, and they played tennis. Clare and
Hobart played together. 'Oh, well up, partner,' Jane could hear him say,
all the time. Or else it was 'Well tried. Too bad.' Clare's happy eyes
shone, brown and clear in her flushed face, like agates. Rather a pretty
thing, Clare, if dull.

The Franks were there, too.

'Old Clare having a good time,' said Mrs. Frank to Jane, during a set
they weren't playing in. Her merry dark eyes snapped. Instinctively, she
usually said something to disparage the good time of other girls. This
time it was, 'That Hobart thinks he's doing himself a good turn with
pater, making up to Clare like that. Oh, he's a cunning fellow. Isn't he
handsome, Jane? I hate these handsome fellows, they always know it so
well. Nothing in his face really, if you come to look, is there? I'd
rather have old Frank's, even if he does look like a half-starved bird.'

2

Jane was calmly rude to Hobart, showing him she despised his paper, and
him for editing it. She let him see it all, and he was imperturbably,
courteously amused, and, in turn, showed that he despised her for
belonging to the 1917 Club.

'_You_ don't,' he said, turning to Clare.

'Gracious, no. I don't belong to a club at all. I go with mother to the
Writers' sometimes, though; that's not bad fun. Mother often speaks
there, you know, and I go and hear. Jolly good she is, too. She read a
ripping paper last week on the "Modern Heroine."'

Jane's considering eyes weighed Hobart, whose courtesy was still
impregnable. How far was he the complete Potterite, identified with his
absurd press? Did he even appreciate Leila Yorke? She would have liked to
know. But, it seemed, she was not to know from him.

3

The Armistice came.

Then the thing was to get to Paris somehow. Jane had, unusually, not
played her cards well. She had neglected the prospect of peace, which,
after al