ter the manner of
a general marshalling his troops for action. He was deft handed, and
responsible for fewer breakages than any of the old-timers--foreigners
for the most--who flitted up and down the passages with the look of bats
startled from their belfries and only half awake. Through an open, glass
window he could see into the huge kitchen, where Mr. Brown brooded over
his oven, and catch rich, sensuous odours that went to his head like so
many etherealized cocktails. He had not eaten since the morning, and
though he was too strong to faint, it grew increasingly difficult to fix
his mind on the examination question which he had set himself. He found
himself wondering instead, what would happen if old Brown lost his
_flair_ for the psychological moment in roasts, and why it was that a man
who had performed an operation successfully a hundred times should
suddenly go to pieces over it? What made him lose faith in himself?
Nerves? A matter of the liver? We were only at the beginning of our
investigations. And then poor little Cosgrave, who as suddenly began to
believe in himself and in life generally because he had fallen in love
with a chorus girl!

The head waiter looked round the pantry door. He was a passionate
Socialist who, in his spare time, preached the extermination of all such
as did not work for their daily bread. But he disliked Robert bitterly,
as a species of bourgeois blackleg.

"You're wanted. There's a party of ten just come in. Hurry up, can't
yer?"

Robert put down his plates and went into the dining-room with the wine
list. His table-napkin he carried neatly folded over one arm.

And there was Francey Wilmot.

She had other people with her, but he saw her first. He could not have
mistaken her. Of course, she had changed. She was taller, for one
thing, and wore evening dress instead of the plain brown frock that he
remembered. But her thick hair had always been short, and now it was
done up it did not seem much shorter. And it still had that quaint air
of being brushed up from her head by a secret, rushing wind--of wanting
to fly away with her. She was burnt, too, with an alien sun and wind.
Her face and neck were a golden brown, and in reckless contrast with her
white shoulders. One saw how little she cared. She sat with her elbows
on the table, and the sight of the supple hands and strong, slender
wrists stopped Robert Stonehouse short, as though a deep, old wound which
h