Nelly Travers won her game amid congratulations, and Tom May
challenged another woman, a Diana, who lived for sport and had
joined the house party with her uncle, Mr. Felix Fayre-Michell.
But Millicent Fayre-Michell refused.

"I've shot six partridges, a hare, and two pheasants to-day," said
the girl, "and I'm half asleep."

Other men were present also of a type not dissimilar. It was a
conventional gathering of rich nobodies, each a big frog in his
own little puddle, none known far beyond it and none with
sufficient intellect or ability to create for himself any position
in the world save that won by the accident of money made by their
progenitors.

Had it been necessary for any of them to earn his living, only in
some very modest capacity and on a very modest plane might they
have done so. Of the entire company only one--the youngest--
could claim even the celebrity that attached to his little
volume of war verses.

And now upon the lives of these every-day folk was destined to
break an event unique and extraordinary. Existence, that had
meandered without personal incident save of a description common
to them all, was, within twelve hours, to confront men and women
alike with reality. They were destined to endure at close quarters
an occurrence so astounding and unparalleled that, for once in
their lives, they would find themselves interesting to the wider
world beyond their own limited circuit, and, for their friends and