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station—and then she would ransack the flat for a really exciting novel and read in bed. Lucy had a taste for thrillers, and with any luck there ought to be something she hadn’t read before.
    It was over the eggs and bacon that she had a moment of weakness. Bacon and eggs for two are more amusing than bacon and eggs for one, and Peter was only just across the landing. If she were to ring him up.… “Idiot!” said Lee. “Do you want to hand yourself over nicely wrapped up in a parcel for him to glory over? And rub it in. And say I told you so. All military and superior. No, you don’t, my girl!”
    She didn’t. She followed out her programme. If she hadn’t had so much proper pride, a good many things would have happened differently. Some of them might never have happened at all. But Lee wasn’t to know this. She admired her proper pride a good deal, and having eaten her supper sat up against three pillows and read an exciting work entitled The Corpse with the Clarionet .

CHAPTER V
    Peter Renshaw came into the Ducks and Drakes and looked about him for the party he had promised to join. If it was stuffy and hot outside in the London streets, it was a great deal hotter and stuffier here. He told himself that it was an act of complete lunacy to go to a night-club in the middle of an August heat-wave. No collar on earth would stand the strain.
    He looked across the dancing-floor and saw no sign of the Nelsons. What he did see was Mavis Grey sitting alone at one of the small tables. She had on an extravagantly cut dress cut of some silver stuff. A ridiculous little bag of the same stuff lay on the table beside her. Mavis was looking down at it, playing with the linked handle, snapping the clasp first shut, then open, and then shut again. She had not seen him, and he had no desire to be seen by her. If the Nelsons didn’t turn up in five minutes, he meant to be off. In fact the more he thought about it the weaker he felt about giving them as much as five minutes.
    Pat on the thought the party arrived—three Nelsons, a sister of Paula’s, a brother of Tony’s, and a red-haired girl, all hot, all hearty, all game for a couple of hours dancing. His fate was sealed, the collar must take its chance.
    He took the floor, first with Paula, and then with the red-haired girl, an artless creature on her first visit to London. She had been sight-seeing hard all day and was full of information about St. Paul’s, the National Gallery, and the Houses of Parliament. Peter was able to dance quite peacefully without having to supply any conversation. A vague encouraging sound at remote intervals was all that was required to keep the ball rolling.
    Mavis passed them in Ross Craddock’s arms—very literally in his arms. His head was bent over hers, and it was he who was doing the talking. Mavis, with her eyes cast down, seemed neither to speak nor to listen. She floated on as if she were in a dream, dark lashes against lovely tinted cheeks, dark hair in a mass of curls caught up with a silver flower. They passed again before the music stopped. This time she lifted her eyes and looked at Peter without surprise, as if she had known all along that he was there. But there was something more in the look than that. It said, “Please, Peter.”
    Peter Renshaw frowned. If Mavis thought she could run him in a string with Ross Craddock she would have to think again. He wasn’t asking for a row with Ross. The fact was, they had never been on very good terms, and the more they saw of one another the worse the terms were likely to be. He gave Mavis an aloof smile, and wondered where Bobby Foster was, and whether Mavis was just playing him up, or what. Perhaps she really liked Ross—there was no accounting for tastes. Perhaps she only thought she liked him because Lucinda kept telling her she mustn’t.
    He detached himself from a problem in which he felt no particular