"Wait a moment. Perhaps my table hasn't gone!"

He ran off in his boyish, impetuous fashion, and Seton watched him,
smiling quietly.

The table proved to be available, and ere long the two were discussing
an excellent dinner. Gray lost much of his irritability and began to
talk coherently upon topics of general interest. Presently, following an
interval during which he had been covertly watching his companion:

"Do you know, Seton," he said, "you are the one man in London whose
company I could have tolerated tonight."

"My arrival was peculiarly opportune."

"Your arrivals are always peculiarly opportune." Gray stared at Seton
with an expression of puzzled admiration. "I don't think I shall ever
understand your turning up immediately before the Senussi raid in Egypt.
Do you remember? I was with the armored cars."

"I remember perfectly."

"Then you vanished in the same mysterious fashion, and the C. O. was
a sphinx on the subject. I next saw you strolling out of the gate at
Baghdad. How the devil you'd got to Baghdad, considering that you didn't
come with us and that you weren't with the cavalry, heaven only knows!"

"No," said Seton judicially, gazing through his uplifted wine-glass;
"when one comes to consider the matter without prejudice it is certainly
odd. But do I know the lady to whose non-appearance I owe the pleasure
of your company tonight?"

Quentin Gray stared at him blankly.

"Really, Seton, you amaze me. Did I say that I had an appointment with a
lady?"

"My dear Gray, when I see a man standing biting his nails and glaring
out into Piccadilly from a restaurant entrance I ask myself a question.
When I learn that he has just cancelled an order for a table for two I
answer it."

Gray laughed. "You always make me feel so infernally young, Seton."

"Good!"

"Yes, it's good to feel young, but bad to feel a young fool; and that's
what I feel--and what I am. Listen!"

Leaning across the table so that the light of the shaded lamp fell fully
upon his flushed, eager face, Gray, not without embarrassment, told his
companion of the "dirty trick"--so he phrased it--which Sir Lucien Pyne
had played upon him. In conclusion:

"What would you do, Seton?" he asked.

Seton sat regarding him in silence with a cool, calculating stare which
some men had termed insolent, absently tapping his teeth with the gold
rim of a monocle which he carried but apparently never used for any
other purpose; and it was at a