t when the
world was rotten!" With a bitter sigh he took his hands away and sat
back in his chair. "And I've failed! Jove! the wild schemes and the
plans, the golden visions and the Eldorados--all failed. Just a little
money, just enough to have a burst in England, just enough to be able
to see you. And then it slipped out. Lady, dear, I never meant to
before I came to the Towers. I knew you were there, but I never meant
to ask you. Wash it out, my princess; wash it out! I haven't said a
word. You've been teaching me a new step; let's go back and dance.
I've been mad this evening, and, unless we go back and dance, I can't
guarantee remaining sane!"

But the girl made no move. With parted lips she swayed towards him,
while he watched her, with the veins standing out on his forehead.
"Billy--I don't care; I'm mad, too!" The scent she used was mounting
to his brain--the nearness of her was driving him mad.

"Molly, get back to that ballroom; get back quick, or----" He spoke
through his clenched teeth.

"Or what, Billy boy?" She smiled deliciously.

And then he kissed her: a kiss that seemed to draw her soul to her
lips: a kiss that lifted him until he travelled through endless spaces
in a great aching void where time and distance ceased, and nothing
happened save a wonderful ecstasy, and ever and anon the mighty booming
of a giant drum.

He seemed to be treading on air, and though the ballroom had vanished,
and the discreet apartment with shaded lights had faded away, yet he
was very conscious of the nearness of his girl. But just now, he could
not see her--she eluded him, leaving an ever-present feeling that she
would be waiting for him round the next of those intangible masses he
seemed to be drifting through.

"You don't mind waiting, my princess?" he murmured ceaselessly. "After
this war it will all come right. Just now I've got to go--I must go
out there; but afterwards, it will all come right--and we'll live in a
house in the country and grow cabbages and pigs. You'll wait, you say?
Ah! my dear, my dear; it's sweet of you; but perhaps you ought to have
married the lawyer man. You might have been Mrs. Prime Minister one of
these days."

For a while the tired brain refused to act; the man felt himself
falling into unplumbed depths--depths which echoed with monstrous
reverberations.

"Molly, where are you, dear? It's cold, and my head is throbbing to
beat the band. If only that cursed dr