account of the darkened streets and the bad winter weather.'
'The darkened streets seem to make no difference to pleasure-going,' I said bitterly, and purposely disregarding her first question. 'Though we are at war—though thousands upon thousands of our poor brave fellows have been killed or maimed in the defence of their homes and their loved ones, yet the London public are still the same. Nothing seems to disturb them. Bond Street, with all its fripperies, is still in full swing: the drapers everywhere are paying big dividends—money is being squandered in luxuries by those who have never previously known such things; jewellers are flourishing, and extravagance runs riot through the land. Men and women go nightly to revues and join in rollicking choruses, even while the death-rattle sounds in the throats of Britain's bravest sons. Ah! Roseye,' I said. 'It is all too awful. What I fear is that we are riding gaily for a fall.'
'No,' she said. 'I agree in a sense with all you say. But we are not riding for a fall, so long as we have brave men ready to sacrifice their lives in Britain's cause. You, Claude, are one of those,' she added, looking straight into my face with an open, frank expression—that love-look which can never be feigned, either by man or by woman.
In that second I realized that at least my suspicion that she had any secret affection for Lionel Eastwell was groundless.
Yet I was, nevertheless, annoyed that he should still mislead her parents by expressions of friendship. True, when I came to examine and to analyse my
