thread that held up the sword of Damocles over her head. Her love

for her home, for her treasured household possessions, and her
pleasant social life was able to expand once more in present

security, and feed on future hope. She was still young enough to
count four or five years as a long time, and to-night she was

optimistic enough to prophesy smooth things of the future that lay
beyond that span. Of the fourth act, with its carefully held back

but obviouslyimminentreconciliation between the leading
characters, she took in but little, except that she vaguely

understood it to have a happy ending. As the lights went up she
looked round on the dispersing audience with a feeling of

friendliness uppermost in her mind; even the sight of Elaine de
Frey and Courtenay Youghal leaving the theatre together did not

inspire her with a tenth part of the annoyance that their entrance
had caused her. Serena's invitation to go on to the Savoy for

supper fitted in exactly with her mood of exhilaration. It would
be a fit and appropriate wind-up to an auspicious evening. The

cold chicken and modest brand of Chablis waiting for her at home
should give way to a banquet of more festive nature.

In the crush of the vestibule, friends and enemies, personal and
political, were jostled and locked together in the general effort

to rejointemporarily estranged garments and secure the attendance
of elusive vehicles. Lady Caroline found herself at close quarters

with the estimable Henry Greech, and experienced some of the joy
which comes to the homeward wendingsportsman when a chance shot

presents itself on which he may expend his remaining cartridges.
"So the Government is going to climb down, after all," she said,

with a provocative assumption of private information on the
subject.

"I assure you the Government will do nothing of the kind," replied
the Member of Parliament with befitting dignity; "the Prime

Minister told me last night that under no circumstances - "
"My dear Mr. Greech," said Lady Caroline, "we all know that Prime

Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples
they sometimes live apart."

For her, at any rate, the comedy had had a happy ending.
Comus made his way slowly and lingeringly from the stalls, so

slowly that the lights were already being turned down and great
shroud-like dust-cloths were being swaythed over the ornamental

gilt-work. The laughing, chattering, yawning throng had filtered
out of the vestibule, and was melting away in final groups from the

steps of the theatre. An impatientattendant gave him his coat and
locked up the cloak room. Comus stepped out under the portico; he

looked at the posters announcing the play, and in anticipation he
could see other posters announcing its 200th performance. Two

hundred performances; by that time the Straw Exchange Theatre would
be to him something so remote and unreal that it would hardly seem

to exist or to have ever existed except in his fancy. And to the
laughing chattering throng that would pass in under that portico to

the 200th performance, he would be, to those that had known him,
something equallyremote and non-existent. "The good-looking

Bassington boy? Oh, dead, or rubber-growing or sheep-farming or
something of that sort."

CHAPTER XIV
THE farewell dinner which Francesca had hurriedly organised in

honour of her son's departure threatened from the outset to be a
doubtfully successful function. In the first place, as he observed

privately, there was very little of Comus and a good deal of
farewell in it. His own particular friends were unrepresented.

Courtenay Youghal was out of the question; and though Francesca
would have stretched a point and welcomed some of his other male

associates of whom she scarcely approved, he himself had been
opposed to including any of them in the invitations. On the other

hand, as Henry Greech had provided Comus with this job that he was
going out to, and was, moreover, finding part of the money for the

necessary outfit, Francesca had felt it her duty to ask him and his
wife to the dinner; the obtuseness that seems to cling to some

people like a garment throughout their life had caused Mr. Greech
to accept the invitation. When Comus heard of the circumstance he

laughed long and boisterously; his spirits, Francesca noted, seemed
to be rising fast as the hour for departure drew near.

The other guests included Serena Golackly and Lady Veula, the
latter having been asked on the inspiration of the moment at the

theatrical first-night. In the height of the Season it was not
easy to get together a goodlyselection of guests at short notice,

and Francesca had gladly fallen in with Serena's suggestion of
bringing with her Stephen Thorle, who was alleged, in loose

feminine phrasing, to "know all about" tropical Africa. His
travels and experiences in those regions probably did not cover

much ground or stretch over any great length of time, but he was
one of those individuals who can describe a continent on the

strength of a few days' stay in a coast town as intimately and
dogmatically as a paleontologist will reconstruct an extinct mammal

from the evidence of a stray shin bone. He had the loud
penetrating voice and the prominent penetrating eyes of a man who

can do no listening in the ordinary way and whose eyes have to
perform the function of listening for him. His vanity did not

necessarily make him unbearable, unless one had to spend much time
in his society, and his need for a wide field of audience and

admiration was mercifully calculated to spread his operations over
a considerable human area. Moreover, his craving for attentive

listeners forced him to interest himself in a wonderful variety of
subjects on which he was able to discourse fluently and with a

certain semblance of special knowledge. Politics he avoided; the
ground was too well known, and there was a definite no to every

definite yes that could be put forward. Moreover, argument was not
congenial to his disposition, which preferred an unchallenged flow

of dissertation modified by occasional helpful questions which
formed the starting point for new offshoots of word-spinning. The

promotion of cottage industries, the prevention of juvenile street
trading, the extension of the Borstal prison system, the

furtherance of vague talkative religious movements the fostering of
inter-racial ENTENTES, all found in him a tireless exponent, a

fluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing,
advocate. With the real motive power behind these various causes

he was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers who
carried on the actual labours of each particular movement he bore

the relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at the
surface, but able to devote a proportionately far greater amount of

time to the advertisement of his progress and achievements. Such
was Stephen Thorle, a governess in the nursery of Chelsea-bred

religions, a skilled window-dresser in the emporium of his own
personality, and needless to say, evanescently popular amid a wide

but shifting circle of acquaintances. He improved on the record of
a socially much-travelled individual whose experience has become

classical, and went to most of the best houses - twice.
His inclusion as a guest at this particular dinner-party was not a

very happy inspiration. He was inclined to patronise Comus, as
well as the African continent, and on even slighter acquaintance.

With the exception of Henry Greech, whose feelings towards his
nephew had been soured by many years of overt antagonism, there was

an uncomfortable feeling among those present that the topic of the
black-sheep export trade, as Comus would have himself expressed it,

was being given undue prominence in what should have been a festive
farewellbanquet. And Comus, in whose honour the feast was given,

did not contribute much towards its success; though his spirits
seemed strung up to a high pitch his merriment was more the

merriment of a cynical and amused onlooker than of one who responds
to the gaiety of his companions. Sometimes he laughed quietly to

himself at some chance remark of a scarcely mirth-provoking nature,
and Lady Veula, watching him narrowly, came to the conclusion that

an element of fear was blended with his seeminglybuoyant spirits.
Once or twice he caught her eye across the table, and a certain

sympathy seemed to grow up between them, as though they were both
consciously watching some lugubrious comedy that was being played

out before them.
An untoward little incident had marked the commencement of the

meal. A small still-life picture that hung over the sideboard had
snapped its cord and slid down with an alarming clatter on to the

crowded board beneath it. The picture itself was scarcely damaged,
but its fall had been accompanied by a tinkle of broken glass, and

it was found that a liqueur glass, one out of a set of seven that
would be impossible to match, had been shivered into fragments.

Francesca's almost motherly love for her possessions made her
peculiarly sensible to a feeling of annoyance and depression at the