‘We have to make allowances for ourselves,’ continued Joan. ‘You see, nobody makes them for us. I know young people are always supposed to be fearfully idealistic and that sort of thing, but I suppose we can’t help feeling that, considering how hard things are on us, we aren’t really so bad.’

‘But do people criticize you all?’ marvelled Colonel Duperrier, who was slightly out of the movement. ‘I personally can understand very well how hard this is on Ammering – having nothing to do but rot about here for a winter. At his age it would have driven me clean off my head.’

‘We think he takes it awfully well,’ said Joan, a little flushed. ‘Of course, we all like him very much.’

‘Lucky fellow!’

‘Oh, well … Of course, for anyone like you to be out here must be awfully jolly. Everyone approves, and your work’s over and nobody wants you to do anything more.’

‘No, I shan’t be wanted again,’ agreed Colonel Duperrier thoughtfully. ‘It’s a good thing I’m fond of tennis. I suppose that’s why one feels strongly about young fellows like Ammering; I mean, seeing them done out of what really is their due.’

‘I don’t suppose Victor would mind being you. I shouldn’t wonder it he sometimes suffered from the same awful feeling as I do, like being sleepy in the morning and wishing it were bed-time. About lunch-time one begins to buck up.’ Joan rubbed her chin thoughtfully with the end of her pen. She was more imaginative than either of her sisters. ‘You’re just about at tea-time, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose I am,’ agreed Colonel Duperrier. ‘Five o’clock tea.’ He thought to himself that it was the kind of tea women sat over till it was time for dinner. At this he began to yawn cavernously, shivered and apologized.

‘One does miss one’s tea out here,’ said Joan. ‘The tea-gardens are so breaking; we can’t afford to go there, and the pâtisserie place is stuffy and full of Italians and one does get sick of pigging it up in one’s room with a spirit-lamp.’

‘I’m too shy to go to the tea-gardens,’ said Colonel Duperrier, ‘but I should like to. I hear the tea there is quite decent. Will you, some time, come and have tea with me there?’

‘Thanks very much, I should like to,’ said Joan, in the business-like tone in which she accepted invitations from the opposite sex. She wanted to go on talking about Victor to somebody who did not at once suspect and smile. So she said, ‘It must be very nice for you, having no future to think of.’ A moment ago she had seemed to understand so well that he almost believed she had said this to hurt him.

‘No future?’ he repeated, and looked at her blankly.