h
her in his arms.

"I don't feel I've made you particularly happy to-night," said Eric,
bending one arm into an angle for her head and throwing the other round
her waist to hold her on to the sofa.

"I feel as if my spirit were almost clean again. . . . Will you come and
see me sometimes, Eric?"

"If you'll go to bed _instantly_, after leaving a note on the mat to say
that you're not to be called till you ring."

There was a touch of frost in the air, as Eric walked home; yet he went
slowly, because he wanted to think. Jack was his best friend, and
Barbara had behaved. . . . He could not abuse the girl even in thought,
after trying to comfort her and saying that she started with a clean
slate. But if any other girl had behaved like that . . . any girl who
meant nothing to him. Even with Barbara he ought not to be so suavely
forgiving at Jack's expense. . . . It was impossible to reconcile
loyalty to both of them.

Before going to bed he wrote her a note, inviting her to lunch with him
next day at Claridge's before she went back to Crawleigh Abbey; and, as
soon as she was sure of his mood, Barbara released her invitations; the
quietest possible party with Amy Loring (who was so anxious to meet him
because he had known Jim), two days afterwards a dinner for two in
Berkeley Square, followed by Mrs. O'Rane's house-warming, later still a
decorous and rather dull dinner with Colonel Grayle.

"You might dine with _me_ for a change," Eric suggested, as he drove her
home at the end of the week. "I'll get my sister to come and keep you in
countenance--she's never seen my flat--and I'll think of another man."

"I'd sooner dine with you alone, Eric," pleaded Barbara.

"On first principles I discourage young girls from visiting bachelors in
their rooms. I was born in the 'eighties, and I don't seem to have
caught up."

"There _are_ restaurants," Barbara suggested. "It's quite fairly
respectable to dine without a chaperon--since the war."

Eric turned and looked out of the window with a frown. He had not
troubled to tell her that he had lately received a shock which
threatened to make further meetings impossible. During a lull in the
tumult at Mrs. O'Rane's party he had heard Lady Maitland's rumbling
preparations for an introduction. "Eric Lane? My dear Raymond Stornaway,
you mean to say you haven't heard of him? But he's _the_ coming
playwright. You've not seen that thing of his----? My memory's like a
_sieve_. . . . Y