"'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