"And then there's the book. I know that man in Heriot and Lord's that I told you about. I'll send it to them right away, if you like."

"Aren't they rather tremendous people for me to begin with? Oughtn't I to begin with some one smaller?"

"Oh! there's no harm in starting at the top. They can't do more than refuse it. But I don't think they will. I believe in it. But how shall I let you know what they say?"

"Oh, I'll come in a week or two and see what's happening--I'll be on a paper by then probably. I say, I don't want the others to know. I'll have supper with them as usual and just tell Mother Brockett afterwards.

I don't want to have to say good-bye lots of times. Well"--he moved off awkwardly towards the door--"You've been most tremendously good to me."

"Rot, Peter: Don't forget me!"

"Forget you! The best pal I've ever had." They clasped hands for a moment. There was a pause and then Peter said: "I say--there _is_ a thing you can do if you like--"

"Yes?--anything--"

"Well--about Miss Rossiter--you'll be seeing her I suppose?"

"Oh yes, often--"

"Well, you might just keep her in mind of me. I know it sounds silly but--just a word or two, sometimes."

He felt that he was blushing--their hands separated. She moved back from him and pushed at her hair in the nervous way that she had.

"Why, of course--she was awfully interested. She won't forget you. Well, we'll meet at supper." She moved back with a last little nod at him and he went awkwardly out of the room with a curious little sense of sudden dismissal. Would she rather he didn't know Miss Rossiter, he vaguely wondered. Women were such queer creatures.

As he went downstairs he wondered with a sudden almost shameful confusion whether he was responsible in some way for the awkwardness that the scene had had. He had noticed lately that she had not been quite herself when he had been with her--that she would stop in the middle of a sentence, that she would be, for instance, vexed at something he said, that she would look at him sometimes as though ...

He pulled himself up. He was angry with himself for imagining such a thing--as though ... Well, women _were_ strange creatures....

And then supper was more difficult than he had expected. They would show him, the silly things, that they were fond of him just when he would much rather have persuaded himself that they hated him. It was almost, as he told himself furiously, as though they knew that he was going; Norah Monogue was the only person who chattered and laughed in a natural way; he was rather relieved that after all she seemed to care so little.

He found that he couldn't eat. There was a silly lump in his throat and he looked at the marble pillars and the heavy curtains through a kind of mist.... Especially was there Robin....

Mrs. Tressiter told him that Robin had something very important to say to him and that he was going to stay awake until he, Peter, came up to him.

"I told him," she said, "that he must lie down and go to sleep like a good boy and that his father would punish him if he didn't. But there!

What's the use of it? He isn't afraid of his father the slightest. He would go on--something about a lion...."

At any rate this gave Peter an excuse to escape from the table and it was, indeed, time, for they had all settled, like a clatter of hens, on to the subject of the bomb, and they all had a great deal to say about it and a great many questions to ask Peter.

"It's these Foreigners... of course our Police are entirely inadequate."

"Yes--that's what I say--the Police are really absurdly inadequate--"

"If they will allow these foreigners--"

"Yes, what can you expect--and the Police really can't--"

Peter escaped to Robin. He glowered down at the child who was sitting up in his cot counting the flowers on the old wall-paper to keep himself awake.

"I always am so muddled after fourteen," he said. "Never mind, I'm _not_ sleeping--"

Peter frowned at him. "You ought to have been asleep long ago," he said. He wished the boy hadn't got his hair tousled in that absurdly fascinating way and that his cheeks weren't flushed so beautiful a red--also his nightgown had lost a button at the top and showed a very white little neck. Peter blinked his eyes--"Look here, kid, you must go to sleep right away at once. What do you want?"

"It's that lion--the one the lady had--I want it."

"You can't have it--the lady's got it."

"Well--take me to see them--the real ones--there are lots somewhere Mother says." Robin inserted his very small hand into Peter's large one.

"All right, one day--we'll go to the 'Zoo."

Robin sighed with satisfaction--he lay down and murmured sleepily to himself, "I love Mister Peter and lions and Mother and God," and was suddenly asleep.

Peter bent down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched.

He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue--and then all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old ... more miserable than he had ever been.

He kissed Robin again--then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett.

Here, too, he was faced with an unexpected difficulty. The good lady, listening to him sternly in her grim little sitting-room, refused to hear of his departure. She sat upright in her stiff chair, her thin black dress in folds about her, the gas-light shining on her neatly parted hair.

"You see, Mrs. Brockett," he explained to her, "I'm no longer in the same position. I can't be sure of my two pounds a week any more and so it wouldn't be right for me to live in a place like this."

"If it's expense that you're thinking about," she answered him grimly, "you're perfectly welcome to stay on here and pay me when you can. I'm sure that one day with so clever a young man--"

"That's awfully good of you, Mrs. Brockett, but of course I couldn't hear of anything like that." For the third time that evening he had to fight against a disposition to blow his nose and be absurd. They were, both of them, increasingly grim with every word that they spoke and any outside observer would have supposed that they were the deadliest of enemies.

"Of course," she began again, "there's a room that I could let you have at the back of the house that's only four shillings a week and really you'd be doing me a kindness in taking it off my hands. I'm sure--"

"No, there's more in it than that," he answered. "I've got to go away--right away. It's time I had a change of scene. It's good for me to get along a bit by myself. You've all been too kind to me, spoilt me--"

She stood up and faced him sternly. "In all my years," she said, "I've never spoilt anybody yet and I'm not likely to be going to begin now.

Spoilt you! Bah!" She almost snorted at him--but there were tears in her eyes.

"I'm not a philanthropist," she went on more dryly than ever, "but I like to have you about the house--you keep the lodgers contented and the babies quiet. I'm sure," and the little break in her voice was the first sign of submission, "that we've been very good friends these seven years and it isn't everywhere that one can pick up friends for the asking--"

"You've been splendid to me," he answered. "But it isn't as though I were going away altogether--you'll see me back in a week or two.

And--and--I say I shall make a fool of myself if I go on talking like this--"

He suddenly gripped her hand and wrung it again and again--then he burst away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the room.

The old black bag was very soon packed, his possessions had not greatly increased during these seven years, and soon he was creeping down the stairs softly so that no one should hear.

The hall was empty. He gave it one last friendly look, the door had closed behind him and he was in the street.

II

In its exuberance and high spirits and general lack of self-control London was similar to a small child taken to the Drury Lane Pantomime for the first time. Of the numbers of young men who, with hats on the back of their heads, passed arm-in-arm down the main thoroughfares announcing it as their definite opinion that "Britons never shall be slaves," of the numbers of young women who, armed with feathers and the sharpest of tongues, showed conclusively the superiority of their sex and personal attractions, of the numbers of old men and old women who had no right whatever to be out on a night like this but couldn't help themselves, and enjoyed it just as much as their sons and daughters did, there is here no room to tell. The houses were ablaze with light, the very lamp-posts seemed to rock up and down with delight at the spirit of the whole affair and the Feast of the Glorification of the Bomb that Didn't Come Off was being celebrated with all the honours.