"Poor you!" (Damnable phrase, damnable
creature--with his insecure eye-glass and plastered flaxen hair!) Johnny
Carstairs would be pontifical and pretentious--"The unhappy Foreign
Office comes in for all the kicks. There's a body of three-pound-a-week
gentlemen in Fleet Street who'd enforce a _real_ blockade, 'leave it to
the Navy,' don't you know, all that sort of thing. I'm aware of them; I
sometimes wish I could have a heart-to-heart talk with them. . . ." By
staying in bed she was at least keeping the promise that she had given
to Eric; the sense of surrender was a novel experiment in emotion.

She finished the letter and switched off the light. Darkness was not
going to usher in faces to-night. Her soul felt healed.

"You absurd darling child!"

She whispered the words aloud and felt warm tears over-brimming her
eyes. She loved him for his extraordinary callow youth--which had
carried the chaste chivalry of sixteen to the age of twice sixteen; she
loved his little occasional tender gleams of womanliness. . . . And he
was so easy to mystify and tease. She felt the warmth and the taut
muscles of his arm round her body as he led her home across St. James'
Park, her head on his shoulder, sleeping, secure and forgetful.

"Dear Eric, I wish you were here now!" she murmured.

Lord Crawleigh, indignant that Barbara should desert her own party the
first night, but vaguely disquieted that she was ill enough to go to bed
of her own volition, peeped into her room on his way down to dinner.
There was no answer to his jerky, sharp call of "Barbara" and he turned
on the light. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling; he walked to
the bed to make certain that she was not trying any of her tricks on
him.

"Barbara!"

"Yes, darling?"

She opened her eyes, and their drowsy contentment faded away.

"I only came to see if you were asleep."

"I'm not--now," she answered wistfully.

"Well, why don't you _get_ some decent sleep? You racket about and
overtax your strength and excite yourself. . . . And this is the
result!"

"I'll do my best, father."

As he creaked out of the room, she shut her eyes tight and tried in
despair to woo herself back to the moment of half-consciousness when
Eric drew her cloak across her chest and she roused to ask him sleepily
"Am I coming undressed?"

2

Barbara rang for tea at noon and came down to luncheon in a house which
was gratifyingly demoralized by her absence. Her father had