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woman beside Mr. Pembridge, when Leonie said she had not caught the name.
    “Why, don’t you know? That’s Renee Armand, the singer. She seems,” he added reflectively, “to approve of our Senior Surgeon.”
    “Ye-es,” agreed Leonie, a trifle surprised to find that Mr. Pembridge should be to the taste of someone quite so unusual and celebrated as this woman appeared to be.
    But then, Mr. Pembridge at the head of his table on board the Capricorna, she had to concede, was rather different from Mr. Pembridge quelling pros with a glance at St. Catherine’s. With the charm of a good host, he seemed to hold all the varying strings of the conversation in his clever, rather beautiful hands, and in no way did his manner to Leonie differ from his manner to all the others.
    But, try as she would to be a carefree passenger like every other carefree passenger, Leonie still had the curious feeling that she should really be rushing around on ward duty, and not sitting at the Senior Surgeon’s table enjoying herself.
    After dinner there was informal dancing in the ballroom, and by common consent, Leonie and Claire drifted in there.
    Hardly had they entered when the Assistant Surgeon came across to them. But it was Leonie, not Claire, whom he asked to dance with him.
    Again Leonie had the uncomfortable conviction that no naturally straightforward person would even want to complicate the deception in this way. Admittedly he could not be frank about the situation. But there was surely no reason for him to elaborate the theme, almost as though he enjoyed confirming the excellence of his own powers of dissembling.
    She would have been glad of an excuse to refuse him. But unfortunately she had already mentioned to Claire how much she liked dancing, so that she had no choice but to accept his invitation. Particularly as someone else came up just then to claim Claire herself.
    So, with an outwardly good grace, she went on to the big, circular floor with Kingsley Stour. But evidently she did not hide her feelings completely, because after a moment her partner smiled down at her and said,
    “You look terribly serious. You’re not still worrying over the problem of our Senior Surgeon, are you?”
    “Of course not!” Leonie spoke quickly and with emphasis. “Though, as a matter of fact,” she added, in order to have something to say, “he did turn out to be the one who was at St. Catherine’s when I was there.”
    “The one who ticked you off?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Too bad. But you don’t have to worry about anything like that now, do you? I was talking to your friend Miss Elstone just before dinner”—he could say it as casually as that!—”and I gathered from her that you are independent of most things these days. In any case, I suppose the nursing wasn’t ever much more than a passing fancy, was it?”
    “I shouldn’t have described it as that myself,” replied Leonie rather coldly, and she wondered uneasily just what story Claire had invented, in order to explain her presence.
    “No? Well, then,” Kingsley Stour said with apparent warmth, “if I may say so, I think it was darned good of you to do two years of nursing, when there wasn’t any need for you to work at all.”
    Disquieted though she was to find herself thus cast for the role of an idle golden girl, Leonie found it quite impossible to reply. She was reluctant to expose the falseness of whatever story Claire had chosen to tell about her, but she certainly did not feel like substantiating it in any way. So she changed the subject and had to let Kingsley Stour think what he would.
    At the end of the dance he brought her skilfully to a standstill just beside Claire and her partner. It was thus perfectly simple for him then to ask Claire to dance, while Leonie went over to exchange a few words with Nicholas Edmonds, who, seated at the side of the ballroom, was surveying the gay scene with a slightly sardonic air.
    “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to