ttle, were
there in squadrons; but gaunt super-Dreadnought and perky destroyer
alike was aggressively British.

England, too, looked strangely unperturbed. There had been sad scenes on
the quay at the Belgian port, but a policeman on duty at the shore end
of the gangway at Dover seemed to indicate by a majestic calm that any
person causing an uproar would be given the alternative of paying ten
shillings and costs or "doing" seven days.

The boat was crowded with refugees; but Dalroy, knowing the wiliness
of stewards, had experienced slight difficulty in securing two chairs
already loaded with portmanteaus and wraps. He heard then, for the first
time, why Irene fled so precipitately from Berlin. She was a guest
in the house of a Minister of State, and one of the Hohenzollern
princelings came there to luncheon on that fateful Monday, 3rd August.

He had invited himself, though he must have been aware that his presence
was an insult and an annoyance to the English girl, whom he had pestered
with his attentions many times already. He was excited, drank heavily,
and talked much. Irene had arranged to travel home next day, but the
wholly unforeseen and swift developments in international affairs, no
less than the thinly-veiled threats of a royal admirer, alarmed her into
an immediate departure. At the twelfth hour she found that her host,
father of two girls of her own age--the school friends, in fact, to whom
she was returning a visit--was actually in league with her persecutor to
keep her in Berlin.

She ran in panic, her one thought being to join her sister in Brussels,
and reach home.

"So you see, dear," she said, with one of those delightfully shy glances
which Dalroy loved to provoke, "I was quite as much sought after as you,
and I would certainly have been stopped on the Dutch frontier had I
travelled by any other train."

The two were packed into a carriage filled to excess. They had no
luggage other than a small parcel apiece, containing certain articles of
clothing which might fetch sixpence in a rag-shop, but were of great and
lasting value to the present owners.

At Charing Cross, while they were walking side by side down the
platform, Irene shrieked, "There they are!" She darted forward and flung
herself into the arms of two elderly people, a brother in khaki, with
the badges of a Guard regiment, and a sister of the flapper order.

Dalroy had been told at Dover to report at once to the War Office, as he