od port which should properly be taken as a liqueur. He saw
again the bridge-table with Gaymer, neat, immaculate and repellent,
calling in a high nasal voice for Barbara to rejoin them. The drive home
was a blank until he was galvanized by her leaning through the window
and directing the coachman to Ryder Street. Thereafter facts gave place
to emotions, and the other emotions to an incredulous elation that
Barbara Neave should have thrown herself at his feet. Perhaps, of
course, she was only emotion-hunting. . . . But she had lain at his
mercy. . . . Perhaps that, too, was an emotion to be wooed, enjoyed and
recorded. Any one less artificial could at least be glad that they were
passing out of each other's life, as they had come into it, without
expectation or regret.

"You'd better not come any farther," she advised him, as they reached
the end of Berkeley Street. "If anybody _should_ be awake and looking
out of the window . . ."

He nodded and held out his hand.

"You have your latch-key?"

"Yes, thanks. Good-night, Eric."

"Good-bye, Lady Barbara."

* * * * *

"_Between men on the Stock Exchange it is a platitude that you can
only get a price in selling what some one else wants to buy; between
men and women outside the Stock Exchange this is often considered a
paradox._"--From the diary of Eric Lane.

CHAPTER TWO

LADY BARBARA NEAVE

"CONSTANTINE: From seventeen to thirty-four . . . the years which a
man should consecrate to the acquiring of political virtue . . .
wherever he turns he is distracted, provoked, tantalised by the
bare-faced presence of woman. How's he to keep a clear brain for
the larger issues of life? . . . Women haven't morals or intellect
in our sense of the words. They have other incompatible qualities
quite as important, no doubt. But shut them away from public life
and public exhibition. It's degrading to compete with them . . .
it's as degrading to compete for them. . . ."
GRANVILLE BARKER: "THE MADRAS HOUSE."

1

The latest, costliest and most ingenious mechanical device in Eric's
bedroom was an electric dial and switchboard communicating with the
kitchen and so constructed that, by moving a clock-hand, the
corresponding dial abandoned the non-committal elusiveness of "_Please
call me at_----" for "_Please call me at 8.00 (or 9.00 or 9.30)._" There
was something calculatedly d