ill, rising up out of the general ruin,
monstrous and powerful, stood like an admonishing shadow at his elbow.

"It's much better. There's nothing to make a coward of you now. You're
free."

He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
He let her go.

PART III

I

1

As to Gyp Labelle, if she had known the part she played in their lives,
which in the nature of things was not possible, she would have broken
into that famous laugh of hers.

To her, at any rate, it would have seemed immensely, excruciatingly funny.

As the result of an exchange of two remarkably casual notes they met at
Brown's for dinner. Brown's had occurred to both of them as a natural
meeting-place. Cosgrave, it is true, had only dined there once and that
free (as a friend of Brown's friend), but the impression made upon a
stomach accustomed to Soho and tea-shop fare had been indelible.
Stonehouse himself dined there as a matter of custom. Besides, there was
a touch of sentiment to their choice--a rather bitter sharp-tasting
sentiment like an aperitif.

Brown himself had aged considerably, and did not remember very well.

"Old friend of the doctor's, sir? Well, so am I. Getting on--getting
on. But I'm waiting till I can squeeze my money's worth out of him.
When's that knighthood coming, doctor? I want to be able to tell that
story--as good a story as you'd read anywhere. He's got to keep me
alive, sir, till it comes true."

He went off to the kitchen tittering to himself over an ancient joke
which, together with his "feeling" for the psychological moment in the
matter of roasts, was about all that was left him.

Stonehouse, his chin resting in his hand, studied the menu from which
they had already chosen.

"When the last Honours List came out, he was quite serious and pathetic
about it," he said. "Things move either too slowly or too quickly for
old people. He does realize that I make quite a good story as I stand,
but he wants the finishing touches--the King clasping me by the hand, or
kissing me on both cheeks, or whatever he thinks happens on those
occasions--and wedding bells as a grand finale."

"The place seems to have grown shabby," Cosgrave said. "Or perhaps it's
only me."

"Oh, no. It is shabby. And perhaps you've noticed, they don't wait here
as they used to."

Cosgrave looked directly at his companion, almost for the first time, and
caught a spark in the eyes that stared