t, for it's proved a chance for
me. Here's the great news. I'm in for my commission and shall soon be
'an officer and a gentleman.' Don't tell his Lordship if you write to
him or see him; he's still in the ranks and might not like it. It's
funny to think that I shall be his military superior before many
weeks are out and that, were he and I to meet, he'd have to salute
me. If I come through the war, I sha'n't go back to being a valet.
Once having been a gentleman----"_

Tabs ran rapidly through this sheet and turned to the next:--

_"You're wonderfully good. I got the socks that you knitted and the
two parcels of food from Harrods. You mustn't spend so much of your
money on me. When it's all ended, I'll pay you back. We'll get
married and have a little cottage in a little town, the way the song
says that we heard together at the Comedy on my last leave. You
remember how it goes.

'And we'll have a little mistress in a silken gown.
A little doggie, a little cat,
A little doorstep, with WELCOME on the mat.'

"My dearest sweetheart, I love you.

"Yours, in the pink, etc."_

Tabs looked up. "May I keep this for the present?--And, by the way, how
many more of them have you?"

"Nearly a hundred from the day he enlisted. That's one of the last--I
never heard from him whether he lived to get his commission."

When she had vanished, he reread the letter more carefully, made a copy
of it and slipped the copy into another envelope addressed to General
Braithwaite, together with a note from himself, which read, "_One of the
important reasons why I am insistent that you shall call on me is
contained in the enclosed copy of one of your many letters, the
originals of all of which are in my possession. To a man of honor it
speaks for itself_."

IV

At the red pillar-box, at the foot of the Square, he posted this second
missive. "He'll receive them both by the first delivery to-morrow," he
thought. "I wonder what he'll---- Rotten! But it can't be helped." Then
he turned to the right by the Tube Station, going up the narrow old
world passage, behind the backs of houses, through the graveyard of the
Brompton Parish Church to Ennismore Gardens and the sudden, railed in
solitudes of Hyde Park.

There were few pedestrians about. Until he reached the Park they were
for the most part men in evening-dress, going to dinner-parties, like
himself. Sometimes they were acco