“I don’t know—I give up—I can’t keep track of things,” Alice’s father confessed fretfully. “At one time there was a sort of understanding, I believe it’s called, between Alice and Hilary, as you know. They’re second cousins—more or less grew up together. But now—I don’t know—he’s been away two years. She seems to be seeing quite a lot of George lately, if it comes to that.”

Because of his own guilty preference for Hilary, Calthorpe kept his eyes on the floor and forbore to remark that George seemed rather more Alice’s sort. Totleigh nearly said it for him.

“Of course George was a lot older when they were kids. Now the difference in their ages doesn’t matter so much. Or does it? Of course I’d rather it was Hilary. But on the other hand—” He petered out, for he too was aware that George, with his very decent income and settled habits, was surely more Alice’s sort. “I give up,” he said again helplessly. “You can’t run other people’s lives for them.”

At that moment Denby of the Home Office entered the room, glanced round quickly, and made for Totleigh on the hearthrug. Hilary arrived on the threshold just behind him and paused there, watching Denby cross the room.

The feeling that he must wake up any moment now had been growing stronger as he approached the club, while the reality of London wavered and receded. Then things began to go askew, as they always do in even the most vivid dreams—discrepancies—omissions—and a looming sense of something dreadfully wrong. First, he discovered he couldn’t remember anything about the voyage home. And then it was a new commissionaire at the club door, in place of old Simpson, who must have died at last. The new man naturally hadn’t recognized him, and the two members who had passed through the swing door just ahead of him were strangers to Hilary. It was not quite the entrance he had counted on. The commissionaire greeted the other two and turned away to find a telephone message. None of them took any notice of Hilary, so he tossed his hat onto a peg and started towards the lounge.

Denby was crossing the hall from the writing-room a few yards away, and Hilary cried his name with relief. But Denby went on, not hearing, into the lounge. Hilary followed, with an idea of moving very carefully now, so as not to jar himself awake. He paused on the threshold. Old Calthorpe was there, and Alice’s father stood on the hearthrug with his pipe....

“—I give up—you can’t run other people’s lives for them—”