od chap and ask Miss
Arden, with my best salaams, to save me a dance or two, in case I'm late
turning up!"

Lance gave him a straight look. "Not I. My pockets will be bulging with
your apologies. You can get some one else to do your commissions in the
other line."

Sheer astonishment silenced Roy; and Desmond, from the threshold, added
more seriously, "Don't let the women here give you a swelled head, Roy.
They'll do their damnedest between them."

When he had gone, Roy sat staring idly at the patch of sunlight outside
his door. What the devil did Lance mean by it? Moods were not in his
line. To make a half-joking request, and find Lance taking it seriously,
wasn't in the natural order of things. And the way he jumped on Barnard,
too. Could there possibly have been a rebuff in that quarter? He
couldn't picture any girl in her senses refusing Lance. Besides, they
seemed on quite friendly terms. Nothing beyond that--so far as Roy could
see. He would very much like to feel sure. But, for all their intimacy,
he knew precisely how far one could go with Lance: and one couldn't go
as far as that.

As for the remark about a swelled head, Lance must have been rotting.
_He_ wasn't troubling about women or girls--except for tennis and
dancing; and Miss Arden was a superlative performer; in fact, rather
superlative all round. As a new experience, she seemed distinctly worth
cultivating, so long as that process did not seriously hamper the
novel,--that was unashamedly his first consideration, at the moment.

He loved every phase of the work; from the initial thrill of inception
to the nice balance of a phrase and the very look of his favourite
words. His childish love of them for their own sake still prevailed. For
him, they were still live things, possessing a character and charm all
their own.

And now, the house being blessedly empty, his pencil sped off again on
its wild career. The men and women he had loved into life were thronging
his brain. Everything else was forgotten--Lance and Miss Arden and the
wedding and the afternoon dancing at the Hall....

CHAPTER II.

"Which is the more perilous, to meet the temptings of Eve, or to
pique her?"--GEORGE MEREDITH.

Of course he reached the Lawrence Hall egregiously late, to find the
afternoon dancing, that Lahore prescribes three times a week, in full
swing.

The lofty pillared Hall--an aristocrat among Station Clubs--was more
crowded than usual. Half