. And he doesn't know if he's eating
pea-soup or oyster-sauce. And she's hoping her hat is drooping just
right, and that he'll notice her ring is on the wrong finger, and how
nice one would look in the right place. To do her justice, she isn't
thinking much about dinner, either; but that's sinful waste, Peter, in
the first place, and bad for one's tummy in the second. However, they're
sentimental, they are, and there's a fortune in it. If they could only
bring themselves to do just that for fifteen minutes at the Alhambra
every night, they'd be the most popular turn in London."

"That's all very well," said he; "but if you eat so fast and talk at the
same time, you'll pay for it very much as you think they will. Have you
finished?"

"No, I haven't. I want cheese-straws, and I shall sit here till I get
them or till the whole of London zigzags round me."

"I say," said Peter to their waitress, "if you possibly can, fetch us
cheese-straws now. Not too many, but quickly. Can you? The lady won't go
without them, and something must be done."

"Wouldn't the management wait if you telephoned, Peter dear?" inquired
Julie sarcastically. "Just say who you are, and they sure will. If the
chorus only knew, they'd go on strike against appearing before you came,
or tear their tights or something dreadful like that, so that they
couldn't come on. Yes, now I am ready. One wee last little drop of the
bubbly--I see it there--and I'll sacrifice coffee for your sake. Give me
a cigarette, though. Thanks. And now my wrap."

She rose, the cigarette in her fingers, smiling at him. Peter hastily
followed, walking on air. He was beginning to realise how often he failed
to understand Julie, and to see how completely she controlled her
apparently more frivolous moods; but he loved her in them. He little
knew, as he followed her out, the tumult of thoughts that raced through
that little head with its wealth of brown hair. He little guessed how
bravely she was already counting the fleeting minutes, how resolutely
keeping grip of herself in the flood which threatened to sweep her--how
gladly!--away.

A good revue must be a pageant of music, colour, scenery, song, dance,
humour, and the impossible. There must be good songs in it, but one does
not go for the songs, any more than one goes to see the working out of a
plot. Strung-up men, forty-eight hours out of the trenches, with every
nerve on edge, must come away with a smile of satisfaction on t