A moment later he unlocked the drawer and enclosed
the letter in a note to Barbara, reminding her that he had long ago
promised to let her have any news that came to him. The promise was
before their engagement; but the letter would shew her that Jack was
capable of writing.

A week later Jack wrote again.

"_I've been shifted to Paris, no longer a prisoner of war, but a more or
less free man. I could probably get discharged to-morrow, if I liked,
but the army does pay me SOMETHING, and I haven't yet found anything
else that will._

"_For the last fortnight I've been doing a turn of French-Without-Tears
as an interpreter at the MINISTERE DE LA GUERRE. There was so little
work to do that the job suited me rather well. Alas! it suited equally
well certain others who had a better claim to it, and I'm being
transferred to England next week with a vague promise of some light duty
at the War Office. The best thing about the new arrangement is that I
shall be at home and shall have a chance of seeing you. 'Mr. Eric Lane,
the well-known dramatist and author, in his charming Ryder Street
residence.' As you probably know, the papers have been full of you; the
gaping world now knows to the last inch of your benevolent smile exactly
how you work and smoke a cigarette and dress and have your pyjamas laid
out. If the photographs are at all good, you seem to have got rather a
comfortable billet. Talking of which, if you hear of any cheap and handy
rooms within a hundred miles of Whitehall, you might keep me in mind.
People out here tell me that London's rather congested._ . . ."

There was a chance, Eric reflected, that Jack might have glanced at the
pictures in "_The World and His Wife_" without troubling to read the
letter-press. It was so unlikely as not to be worth entertaining. That
he had read of the rumoured engagement was as certain as that he made no
comment upon it.

Whether he had seen it or not was trivial. All this pernickety analysis
was flooded by the overwhelming fact that Jack was coming home. Germany,
Switzerland, Paris, London; nearer and nearer. Within seven days he
might be taking train for Crawleigh--to shew what was left of him and to
ask whether Barbara wished to withdraw her promise. Within six days she
might be begging to be set free, appealing to Eric's love and
magnanimity. . . .

He determined that, if they were to play battledore-and-shuttlecock with
their capability for self-sacrifice, he would st