he rest, some months later, pouring tea
for me in her flat. There is not much in it. She said that she had
taken very little account of Jack's companion; had just reckoned him
up for a chance idler in his company--"a sort of super-commercial
traveller"; so she described him; "not at all bad-looking though."

She went on to tell that she had been mildly surprised to see them at
dinner, seated together; further surprised and even intrigued, to see
them at breakfast together, next morning.

"Later," said she, "I asked him, 'Who's your friend that you didn't
introduce yesterday?' 'Well,' said Dr. Foe, 'I didn't introduce him
because I thought you mightn't like it. He's rather an outsider.
His name's Farrell.' 'Farrell,' I said--'But isn't that--wasn't
he--?' 'Yes, he is, and he was,' Dr. Foe told me very gravely.
'That's just it.' I couldn't help asking how, after what had
happened, they came to be travelling in company. 'That's the funny
part of it,' was the answer; 'he's trying to make some kind of--well,
of a reparation.' I thought better of Dr. Foe, Roddy. . . . It seems
so _mean_, somehow, that after what you've told me, Dr. Foe should
be-what shall I say?--accepting this reparation from a man who
happens to be rich!"

Constantia repeated this, in effect, some two or three nights later.
We had danced through a waltz together and agreed to sit out another.
We sat it out, under a palm. It was somewhere in the immediate
neighbourhood of Queen's Gate, and a fashionable band, tired of
modernist tunes, was throbbing out the old _Wiener Blatter_. . . .
If Constantia remembered that sacred tune, she gave no sign of it.

"I thought better--somehow--of your friend," said Constantia.

I gave her a sort of guessing look. "You may take it from me, Con,"
I said, "that the trouble's not there. I'm worried about Jack.
I haven't heard from him for months. But he's not of that make,
whatever he is."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I feel that I'd like to know. If you
are right, why were he and this Mr. Farrell such close friends?"

"Farrell's pretty impossible, I agree," said I.

Constantia opened her fan and snapped it. "Impossible?" said she.
"Well, I don't know. . . . Dr. Foe introduced him, later on . . .
and what do you think Mamma said? She said that she had supposed
them at first sight to be relatives. There was a trick about the
eyes and the corner of the brow. . . . You are quite sure," she added
irrelev