uired spasmodically how old Eric was, how
much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures
he had in contemplation.

It was a relief to walk over to Red Roofs next day and have tea with
Agnes Waring and her father. For an hour he was spared even indirect
references to the unhappy interview, though in his over-sensitive
condition he fancied that Agnes was unwontedly frigid in manner, as
though a new barrier had been placed between them. Conversation centred
about her brother. Humanly speaking, he would be released from
Switzerland within a few weeks and would come either to Paris or London;
he was, of course, debarred from active service, but the War Office
would no doubt test his capabilities of health and brain either in
Whitehall or at the Ministere de la Guerre. Eric could count on seeing
him almost any day--in England, or, if he could invent a mission, in
Paris.

Only when she had walked through the garden to send him on his way
across the fields did Agnes touch on the offending article. They were
standing on opposite sides of a sun-dial at the end of a fruit-walk; and
both were recalling the earlier Sundays when Eric had asked with
sympathetically lowered voice: "No news of Jack, I suppose?"

"You're looking as if you wanted a holiday," Agnes volunteered.

"I've been rather worried lately," Eric answered vaguely.

"Not about that----" She looked at him and moved round, slipping her
hand through his arm. "_I_ shouldn't worry about a thing like that!
She's so well-known that the papers are on to her like cats on a mouse.
. . . I liked her that night I met her, Eric."

"It makes my relations with her rather difficult," he laughed.

"But all you've got to do is not to meet her!" Agnes explained in a tone
of convincing reason.

"She's--_one_ of the greatest friends I've got," he said.

Agnes rubbed gently at the tarnished motto on the dial.

"That makes it rather difficult, of course," she said at length.

And then it seemed easiest for him to shake hands and walk away without
adding anything.

His family by itself on one side, Agnes by herself on the other would
not have spurred Eric to action. He was precipitated by the
felicitations of an almost complete stranger in the train on Monday
morning and held to his course by a succession of congratulatory notes
and telephone messages.

"_I don't know_," he wrote to Barbara on reaching home, "_whether you
have seen this week's '_World a