to the
rest, and once jotted down some notes on the back of a programme. They
took no notice of anyone, but the eyes of the woman with the officer, who
hardly spoke to her, searched Julie unblushingly.

Julie, gave a little sigh of happiness. "This is lovely, Peter," she
said. "We'll be ages over dinner. It's such fun to be in nice clothes
just for dinner sometimes and not to have to worry about the time, and
going on elsewhere. But I do wish my friends could see me, I must say.
They'd be horrified. They thought I was going to a stodgy place in West
Kensington. I was must careful to be vague, but that was the idea. Peter,
how would you like to live in a suburb and have heaps of children, and
dine out with city men and their wives once or twice a month for a
treat?"

Peter grimaced. Then he looked thoughtful. "It wouldn't have been any so
remarkable for me at one time, Julie," he said.

She shook her head. "It would, my dear. You're not made for it."

"What am I made for, then?"

She regarded him solemnly, and then relaxed into a smile. "I haven't a
notion, but not that. The thing is never to worry. You get what you're
made for in the end, I think."

"I wonder," said Peter. "Perhaps, but not always. The world's full of
square pegs in round holes."

"Then they're stodgy pegs, without anything in them. If I was a square
peg I'd never go into a round hole."

"Suppose there was no other hole to go into," demanded Peter.

"Then I'd fall out, or I wouldn't go into any hole at all. I'd sooner be
anything in the world than stodgy, Peter. I'd sooner be like that woman
over there who is staring at me so!"

Peter glanced to one side, and then back at Julie. He was rather grave.
"Would you really?" he questioned.

The waiter brought the Chianti and poured out glasses. Julie waited till
he had gone, and then lifted hers and looked at Peter across it. "I
would," she said. "I couldn't live without wine and excitement and song.
I'm made that way. Cheerio, Solomon!"

They drank to each other. Then: "And love?" queried Peter softly.

Julie did not reply for a minute. She set her wine-glass down and toyed
with the stem. Then she looked up at him under her eyelashes with that
old daring look of hers, and repeated: "And love, Peter. But real love,
not stodgy humdrum liking, Peter. I want the love that's like the hot
sun, and the wide, tossing blue sea east of Suez, and the nights under
the moon where the real world wakes up