"But you haven't had your dessert," said Francis, laying a fatherly detaining hand on the arm of the other man. Aaron looked at the detaining hand.

"The dessert isn't much to stop for," he said. "I can take with me what I want." And he picked out a handful of dried figs.

The two went across to Angus' table.

"We're going to take coffee together," said Francis complacently, playing the host with a suave assurance that was rather amusing and charming in him.

"Yes. I'm very glad," said Angus. Let us give the show away: he was being wilfully nice. But he _was_ quite glad; to be able to be so nice.

Anything to have a bit of life going: especially a bit of pleased life.

He looked at Aaron's comely, wine-warmed face with gratification.

"Have a Grand Marnier," he said. "I don't know how bad it is. Everything is bad now. They lay it down to the war as well. It used to be quite a decent drink. What the war had got to do with bad liqueurs, I don't know."

Aaron sat down in a chair at their table.

"But let us introduce ourselves," said Francis. "I am Francis--or really Franz Dekker--And this is Angus Guest, my friend."

"And my name is Aaron Sisson."

"What! What did you say?" said Francis, leaning forward. He, too, had sharp ears.

"Aaron Sisson."

"Aaron Sisson! Oh, but how amusing! What a nice name!"

"No better than yours, is it?"

"Mine! Franz Dekker! Oh, much more amusing, _I_ think," said Francis archly.

"Oh, well, it's a matter of opinion. You're the double decker, not me."

"The double decker!" said Francis archly. "Why, what do you mean!--"

He rolled his eyes significantly. "But may I introduce my friend Angus Guest."

"You've introduced me already, Francesco," said Angus.

"So sorry," said Francis.

"Guest!" said Aaron.

Francis suddenly began to laugh.

"May he not be Guest?" he asked, fatherly.

"Very likely," said Aaron. "Not that I was ever good at guessing."

Francis tilted his eyebrows. Fortunately the waiter arrived with the coffee.

"Tell me," said Francis, "will you have your coffee black, or with milk?" He was determined to restore a tone of sobriety.

The coffee was sipped in sober solemnity.

"Is music your line as well, then?" asked Aaron.

"No, we're painters. We're going to work in Rome."

"To earn your living?"

"Not yet."

The amount of discretion, modesty, and reserve which Francis put into these two syllables gave Aaron to think that he had two real young swells to deal with.

"No," continued Francis. "I was only JUST down from Oxford when the war came--and Angus had been about ten months at the Slade--But I have always painted.--So now we are going to work, really hard, in Rome, to make up for lost time.--Oh, one has lost so much time, in the war. And such PRECIOUS time! I don't know if ever one will even be able to make it up again." Francis tilted his handsome eyebrows and put his head on one side with a wise-distressed look.

"No," said Angus. "One will never be able to make it up. What is more, one will never be able to start again where one left off. We're shattered old men, now, in one sense. And in another sense, we're just pre-war babies."

The speech was uttered with an odd abruptness and didacticism which made Aaron open his eyes. Angus had that peculiar manner: he seemed to be haranguing himself in the circle of his own thoughts, not addressing himself to his listener.

So his listener listened on the outside edge of the young fellow's crowded thoughts. Francis put on a distressed air, and let his attention wander. Angus pursed his lips and his eyes were stretched wide with a kind of pleasure, like a wicked owl which has just joyfully hooted an ill omen.

"Tell me," said Francis to Aaron. "Where were YOU all the time during the war?"

"I was doing my job," said Aaron. Which led to his explaining his origins.

"Really! So your music is quite new! But how interesting!" cried Francis.

Aaron explained further.

"And so the war hardly affected you? But what did you FEEL about it, privately?"

"I didn't feel much. I didn't know what to feel. Other folks did such a lot of feeling, I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut."

"Yes, quite!" said Angus. "Everybody had such a lot of feelings on somebody else's behalf, that nobody ever had time to realise what they felt themselves. I know I was like that. The feelings all came on to me from the outside: like flies settling on meat. Before I knew where I was I was eaten up with a swarm of feelings, and I found myself in the trenches. God knows what for. And ever since then I've been trying to get out of my swarm of feelings, which buzz in and out of me and have nothing to do with me. I realised it in hospital. It's exactly like trying to get out of a swarm of nasty dirty flies. And every one you kill makes you sick, but doesn't make the swarm any less."

Again Angus pursed and bridled and looked like a pleased, wicked white owl. Then he polished his monocle on a very choice silk handkerchief, and fixed it unseeing in his left eye.

But Francis was not interested in his friend's experiences. For Francis had had a job in the War Office--whereas Angus was a war-hero with shattered nerves. And let him depreciate his own experiences as much as he liked, the young man with the monocle kept tight hold on his prestige as a war hero. Only for himself, though. He by no means insisted that anyone else should be war-bitten.

Francis was one of those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, and told all his tale as if it was a comedy. A comedy it seemed, too, at that hour. And a comedy no doubt it was. But mixed, like most things in this life. Mixed.

It was quite late before this seance broke up: and the waiter itching to get rid of the fellows.

"Well, now," said Francis, as he rose from the table and settled his elegant waist, resting on one hip, as usual. "We shall see you in the morning, I hope. You say you are going to Venice. Why? Have you some engagement in Venice?"

"No," said Aaron. "I only was going to look for a friend--Rawdon Lilly."

"Rawdon Lilly! Why, is he in Venice? Oh, I've heard SUCH a lot about him. I should like so much to meet him. But I heard he was in Germany--"

"I don't know where he is."