ed to
the greater comfort of a bedroom at the County Club. For two or three
years before the war they hardly met; Eric, disappointed and sore from
want of recognition, was shutting himself away from his former friends,
while Waring was gathering together a practice and exploring with
discrimination the social diversions of London. The war hardly increased
the distance between them, and it was only when Jack Waring was reported
to be "missing" that Eric realized he had lost his best and oldest
friend.

He replaced the album in its shelf and went on undressing. So many
friends had already been killed in these first fourteen months of war
that he had fallen into a "sooner-or-later" frame of mind about all.
Their death ceased to surprise and no longer shocked him as it had once
done. Until the war, Jack was always at call. Now, when the war ended,
he would _not_ come back. . . . Eric shrugged his shoulders and
clambered into bed. The Warings were plucky about it, because every day
the suspense must become worse; and all the while people would rush up
and ask for news, as he had done with Agnes, instead of leaving her to
spread the news as soon as she had any. People thought that they were
being sympathetic when they were simply tearing the bandage away from
the wound to gratify their own curiosity. He would never have asked the
question but for his promise to Barbara. . . .

Why, then, was he not letting her know the result? He reached for his
despatch-box and settled himself comfortably against the pillows.

"_I promised to see if I could get any news of our friend Jack Waring_,"
he began, then hesitated to wonder whether her letters reached Barbara
uncensored or whether sharp-eyed, subdued Lady Crawleigh would ask
tonelessly, "Who's your letter from, Babs?" Decorum, he decided, should
blossom between the lines and shed its waxen petals round each word. . . .
"_His sister was dining with us to-night, and I am sorry to say_ . . ."
"_Did you know him well? He was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.
I remember once_ . . ."

Eric found himself fondly stringing together anecdotes of Jack until he
had overshot the limits of a single sheet; it seemed but a moment before
he was leaning out of bed to reach a third. "_You must forgive me, if I
have rather let myself go about him_," he ended. "_I remember the first
weeks of the war, when I had a nervous breakdown. His father's place is
about two miles from here, and he used to