with this girl would mean. He suddenly realised how essentially domestic
his instincts really were. Life with Miss Verepoint would mean perpetual
dinners at restaurants, bread-throwing suppers, motor-rides--everything
that he hated most. Yet, as a man of honor, he was tied to her. If the
revue was a success, she would marry him--and revues, he knew, were
always successes. At that very moment there were six "best revues in
London," running at various theaters. He shuddered at the thought that
in a few weeks there would be seven.

He felt a longing for rural solitude. He wanted to be alone by himself
for a day or two in a place where there were no papers with
advertisements of revues, no grill-rooms, and, above all, no Miss Billy
Verepoint. That night he stole away to a Norfolk village, where, in
happier days, he had once spent a Summer holiday--a peaceful, primitive
place where the inhabitants could not have told real revue from a
corking effect.

Here, for the space of a week, Roland lay in hiding, while his
quivering nerves gradually recovered tone. He returned to London
happier, but a little apprehensive. Beyond a brief telegram of
farewell, he had not communicated with Miss Verepoint for seven days,
and experience had made him aware that she was a lady who demanded an
adequate amount of attention.

That his nervous system was not wholly restored to health was borne in
upon him as he walked along Piccadilly on his way to his flat; for,
when somebody suddenly slapped him hard between the shoulder-blades, he
uttered a stifled yell and leaped in the air.

Turning to face his assailant, he found himself meeting the genial gaze