It ended in Joan’s promising to introduce her to discreet theatrical friends who would tell her of cosmetics less injurious to the skin, and advise her generally in the ancient and proper art of “making up.” Mrs. Denton had died. She had left Joan her library, together with her wonderful collection of note books. She had brought them all up-to-date and indexed them. They would be invaluable to Francis when he started the new paper upon which they had determined. He was still in the hospital at Breganze, near to where his machine had been shot down. She had tried to get to him; but it would have meant endless delays; and she had been anxious about her father. The Italian surgeons were very proud of him, he wrote. They had had him X-rayed before and after; and beyond a slight lameness which gave him, he thought, a touch of distinction, there was no flaw that the most careful scrutiny would be likely to detect. Any day, now, he expected to be discharged. Mary had married an old sweetheart. She had grown restless in the country with nothing to do, and, at the suggestion of some friends, had gone to Bristol to help in a children’s hospital; and there they had met once more.!

With the elders it was sense of duty that prevailed. That, at all events, was English. The country must be saved. To their sons and daughters it was the originality, the novelty that gradually appealed. Mrs. Denton’s Fridays became a new sensation. It came to be the chic and proper thing to appear at them in shades of mauve or purple. A pushing little woman in Hanover Street designed the “Denton” bodice, with hanging sleeves and square-cut neck. The younger men inclined towards a coat shaped to the waist with a roll collar. “You’re not angry with me?” he asked. “I haven’t been rude, have I?”

And as she did so, it seemed to her that someone passing breathed upon her lips a little kiss: and for a while she did not move. Then, treading softly, she looked into the room. Her father came to the station with her in the morning. The train was not in: and they walked up and down and talked. Suddenly she remembered: it had slipped her mind. He rose slowly from a high-backed chair beside the fire.