In Italy he fondly believed that he had fought his fight and
conquered. Yet now, behold, it was all to do over again!

"Theo, my dear chap, there _is_ such a thing as breakfast!" Paul's
voice brought him back to earth with a thud. "Will you have a
congealed rasher or a tepid egg--or both?"

"Neither, confound you!" Desmond answered, swinging round with an
abrupt laugh and strolling back to the table.

Inevitably he glanced at the perturbing envelope, open now and propped
against the milk-jug, and as inevitably Paul answered his look.

"Honor is in town for a few days," he said, putting the letter near
Theo's plate, "staying with Lady Meredith's sister. She hopes I can go
in and see her this morning. She seems under the impression that you
are too busy, just now, to be included in any invitation."

Desmond buttered a leathery triangle of toast with elaborate
precision. "You may as well encourage that notion, old chap. It
simplifies things. You're going yourself, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Lucky devil!"

He scowled at the envelope by his plate and tacitly dismissed the
subject by an excursion into the _Morning Post_.

They talked politics and theatres till the unappetising meal was ended
and Paul pocketed his treasure with a sigh. It was the first time Theo
had ignored one of her letters; and the simple-hearted fellow--quite
unaware that his mention of the other man had been a master-stroke of
policy--felt almost at his wits' end. Standing by the mantelpiece
mechanically filling his pipe, he watched Desmond set out his books
and papers on the table near the window, intent on a morning of
abnormal industry; and the pathos of it all caught at his heart. For
the first time in his controlled and ordered life he felt impelled to
carry a situation by storm--the result possibly of playing Providence
to Theo for the space of a year.

But Theo plus a woman, loving and beloved, whom he obstinately refused
to meet, was a problem demanding far more of diplomacy, of intimate
human experience than Paul Wyndham had been blest withal. The one
obvious service required of him was easier to recognise than to
achieve. By some means these two must be brought together in spite of
themselves; but for all his forty years he was pathetically at a loss
to know how the deuce one contrived that sort of thing. It was a
woman's job. Mrs Olliver, now, could have fixed it all up in a
twinkling; while he--poor clumsy fool!--could only sit there s