"Walk! Then let us all walk together, and we'll persuade you into the Cafe Royal."

"Dick Garstin will be there," said Ambrose Jennings in a frail voice, "Enid Blunt, a Turkish refugee from Smyrna who writes quite decent verse, Thapoulos, Penitence Murray, who is just out of prison, and Smith the sculptor, with his mistress, a round-faced little Russian girl. She's the dearest little Bolshevik I know."

He looked plaintively yet critically at Lady Sellingworth, and pulled his little black beard with fingers covered with antique rings.

"Dear little bloodthirsty thing!" he added to Lady Sellingworth. "You would like her. I know it."

"I'm sure I should. There is something so alluring about Bolshevism when it's safely tucked up at the Cafe Royal. But I will only walk to the door."

"And then Mr. Craven will get you a taxi," said Miss Van Tuyn. "Shall we go?"

They fared forth into the London night--Craven last.

He realized that Miss Van Tuyn had made up her mind to keep both him and Jennings as her possessions of the evening, and to send Lady Sellingworth, if she would go home early, back to Berkeley Square without an escort. Her cult for her friend, though doubtless genuine, evidently weakened when there was any question of the allegiance of men. Craven made up his mind that he would not leave Lady Sellingworth until they were at the door of Number 18A, Berkeley Square.

In the street he found himself by the side of Miss Van Tuyn, behind Lady Sellingworth and Ambrose Jennings, who were really a living caricature as they proceeded through the night towards Shaftesbury Avenue. The smallness of Jennings, accentuated by his bat-like cloth cloak, his ample sombrero and fantastically long stick, made Lady Sellingworth look like a moving tower as she walked at his side, like a leaning tower when she bent graciously to catch the murmur of his persistent conversation. And as over the theatres in letters of fire were written the names of the stars in the London firmament--Marie Lohr, Moscovitch, Elsie Janis--so over, all over, Lady Sellingworth seemed to be written for Craven to read: "I am really not a Bohemian."

"Do you genuinely wish Lady Sellingworth to finish the evening at the Cafe Royal?" he asked of his companion.

"Yes. They would love her there. She would bring a new note."

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