was just trying to get
things a bit together when you rang, sir. I'm to throw away all that old
stuff, he said. A reg'lar new start he's making--_and_ a lively one, I
don't think. Theatres and supper parties ever since he's been back, sir,
and right glad I've been to see it, though I don't 'old with
carryings-on, in a general way. But after them there tropiks he'd need a
change. He was that down, sir, when he first came, I didn't know what to
think."

The room might have belonged to a young dandy returned to London from the
wilds of Central Africa. It was littered with half-open boxes, new
suits, a disorderly regiment of shining, unworn boots and shoes, a pile
of ties that must have been chosen for sheer expensiveness. (Stonehouse
remembered the spotted affair with which Cosgrave had wooed Connie
Edward's approval.) The shabby suit in which Stonehouse had first met
him had been flung with the other cast-offs into a far corner. It was
all very young and reckless and jolly. One could see the owner, as he
rampaged about the room, whistling and cursing in a good-humoured haste.

"'Ere's 'is writing-table; I'll just make room for you, sir----"

He stopped her.

"It doesn't matter. If he's to be at the Carlton I'll probably look him
up myself."

"Dining early, he said, sir--seven o'clock."

"Yes--thank you."

A folded, grey-tinted letter lay half hidden in the general melee. It
had a bold, irrepressible look, as though it were aware of having blown
the room to smithereens and was rather amused. Stonehouse could see the
large, sprawling hand that covered it. He touched it, not knowing
why--nor yet that he was angry. Something that had been asleep in him
for a long time stirred uneasily and stretched itself.

"Ladies"--his companion simpered---"always the ladies, sir."

Stonehouse laughed.

An hour later he was waiting for Cosgrave in the Carlton lounge. He had
never been in the place before--or in any place like it--and it confused
and astonished him. He was like a monk who had come unprepared into the
crude noise and glitter of a society desperately pleasure-seeking. He
could regard the men and women round him with contempt, but not with
indifference, for they represented a force against which he had not yet
tried himself except in theory. And they set a new standard. Here his
life and his attainments were of no account. What mattered was that he
wore his travelling clothes, and that he stood