glow of the sunset still lingered above the Palace
and in the soft half-light the trees and lawns held to their vivid
green. A few early lamps shone with steady brilliance beyond the
foliage.

On one of the benches sat a khaki-clad soldier and a girl,
hand-in-hand; they stared before them unsmiling, in ineffable
speechless contentment. The King's Messenger glanced at the pair as he
limped past, and for an instant the girl's eyes met his
disinterestedly; they were large round eyes of china blue, limpid with
happiness.

The passer-by smiled a trifle grimly. "Bless 'em!" he said to himself
in an undertone. "They don't care if it snows ink.... And all the
world's their garden...."

Podgie d'Auvergne had fallen into a habit of talking aloud to himself.
It is a peculiarity of men given to introspective thought who spend
much time alone. Since the wound early in the war that cost him the
loss of a foot he had found himself very much alone, though the role of
"Cat that walked by Itself" was of his own choosing. It is perhaps the
inevitable working of the fighting male's instinct, once maimed
irrevocably, to walk thenceforward a little apart from his
fellows--that gay company of two-eyed, two-legged, two-armed favourites
of Fate for whom the world was made.

For a while he pursued the train of thought started by the lovers on
the bench. The distant noises of the huge city filled his ears with a
murmur like a far-off sea, and abruptly, all unbidden, Hope the
Inextinguishable flamed up within him. Winged fancy soared and flitted
above the conflagration.

"But supposing," said Podgie d'Auvergne to the pebbles underfoot,
returning to his hurt like a sow to her wallow, "supposing I was
sitting there with her on that seat and some fellow came along and
insulted her!" He considered unhinging possibilities with a brow of
thunder. "Damn it!" said the King's Messenger, "I couldn't even thrash
the blighter."

He made a fierce pass in the air with his walking-stick, dispelling
imaginary Apaches, and brought himself under the observation of a
policeman in Birdcage Walk.

"Any way, I'm not likely to find myself sitting on a bench with her in
St. James's Park, or anywhere else," concluded the soliloquist. High
Fancy, with scorched wings, fluttered down to mundane levels.

He turned into Queen Anne's Gate, but on the steps leading up to the
once familiar door he paused and looked up at the front of the old
house.

"Tha