ots en cuir_ the height of luxury, was
dressed _de rigueur_ for luncheon at the Savoy.

Many eyes followed them as they crossed Trafalgar Square and dodged the
traffic flowing around the base of King Charles's statue. An alert
recruiting-sergeant, clinching the argument, pointed out the tall,
well-groomed officer to a lanky youth whose soul was almost afire with
martial decision.

"There y'are," he said, with emphatic thumb-jerk, "that's wot the
British army will make of you in a couple of months. An' just twig the
sort o' girl you can sort out of the bunch. Cock yer eye at _that_, will
you?"

Thus, all unconsciously, Irene started the great adventure for one of
Kitchener's first half-million.

She was not kept waiting many minutes in an ante-room. Dalroy
reappeared, smiling mysteriously, yet, as Irene quickly saw, not quite
so content with life as when he entered those magic portals, wherein a
man wrestles with an algebraical formula before he finds the department
he wants.

"Well," she inquired, "having picked your brains, are they going to
court-martial you for being absent without leave?"

"I cross to-night," he said, leading her toward the Horse Guards'
Parade. "It's Belgium, not France. I'm on the staff. My appointment will
appear in the gazette to-morrow. That's fine, but I'd rather----"

Irene stopped, almost in the middle of the road.

"And you'll wear a cap with a red band and a golden lion, and those
ducky little red tabs on the collar! Come at once, and buy them! I
refuse to lunch with you otherwise."

"A man must not wear the staff insignia until he is gazetted," he
reminded her.

"Oh!" She was pathetically disappointed.

"But, in my case," he went on, "I am specifically ordered to travel in
staff uniform, so, as I leave London at seven o'clock----"

"You can certainly lunch in all your glory," she vowed. "There's an
empty taxi!"

Of course, it was pleasant to be on the staff, and thus become even more
admired by Irene, if there is a degree surpassing that which is already
superlative; but the fly in the ointment of Dalroy's new career lay in
the fact that the battle of the Aisne was just beginning, and every
British heart throbbed with the hope that the Teuton hordes might be
chased back to the frontier as speedily as they had rushed on Paris.
Dalroy himself, an experienced soldier, though he had watched those grim
columns pouring through the valley of the Meuse, yielded momentarily to
th