"I shan't bother you again before Saturday," he said; "I know what a
week it will be at the theatre. Remember you are to give the man
his orders about the brougham. I can get on perfectly with the cart.
Good-bye! Calcutta is waiting for you."

"Calcutta is never impatient," said Miss Howe. "It is waiting with yawns
and much whisky and soda." She gave him a stately inclination with her
hand, and he overcame the temptation to lay his own on his heart in a
burlesque of it. At the door he remembered something, and turned. He
stood looking back precisely where Laura Filbert had stood, but the sun
was gone. "You might tell me more about your friend of the altruistic
army," he said.

"You saw, you heard, you know."

"But--"

"Oh," cried she, disregardingly, "you can discover her for yourself, at
the Army Headquarters in Bentinck Street--you man!"

Lindsay closed the door behind him without replying, and half-way down
the stairs her voice appealed to him over the banisters.

"You might as well forget that. I didn't particularly mean it."

"I know you didn't," he returned. "You woman! But you yourself--you're
not going to play with your heavenly visitant?"

Hilda leaned upon the banisters, her arms dropping over from the elbows.
"I suppose I may look at her," she said; and her smile glowed down upon