“What upset her?” Alice was asking. “I thought perhaps she was worrying about Hilary again.”

“No,” said George, and began to pour out into the little stemmed glasses with great care. “Are you?”

“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t been writing much either,” she acknowledged defensively, “so I don’t really deserve to hear. One loses touch.” She accepted her glass from him and raised it, with a little provocative smile. “Cheerio,” she said, and drank.

“Bung-ho,” said George, and took his at a gulp.

“Happy landings,” murmured Hilary, watching them.

“Alice—” George set down his glass with a clink. “—how much longer are you going to let things go on like this?”

“What?” She raised startled blue eyes to his darkening gaze.

“How much longer are you going to let me dangle?”

“George, you’re not to talk like that. Especially when we don’t even know where Hilary is.”

“Oh, does that matter?” queried Hilary.

“Does that make a difference?” said George.

“I don’t know,” she admitted unhappily. “I suppose it does.”

“Very well. When he turns up the next time—”

“No, George, I won’t listen!”

“You’ve got to listen. I’m sick of hanging about on one foot waiting for Hilary to make up his mind to marry you!” cried George angrily. “After all — where do I come in?”

“George, Hilary’s never asked me to promise anything — actually. But if I choose to consider myself pledged—”

“Pledged to what?” he jeered rudely. “To marry him if and when he asks you to set a date, and then sit down in a vile hill station in India while he disappears on some comic-opera secret-service job and—”

“There’s nothing comic about India just now.”

“Then why go there?”

“I never said I was going there. Don’t let’s quarrel, George, least of all about Hilary.”

“I’m not quarreling,” asserted George. “I’m only asking you what there is in it for you as things are?”

She turned away, setting down her empty glass.

“Nothing,” she said quietly. “Nothing very much.”

“Then why do you go on with it?” demanded George logically.

There was a silence while she drifted down the room, avoiding chairs and tables blindly, her hands pressed together.

“Tell him,” Hilary directed her urgently. “I want to know.” But still she did not speak, staring down into the street from beside the window, moving on again, aimlessly, out of George’s reach. “Why did you go on with it?” Hilary repeated.

“All right, George, I’ll tell you,” she said at last, and would not look round. “I’m sorry for him.”

“Sorry for Hilary!” cried George in honest astonishment.

“Sorry—!” said Hilary, for it was one thing he had not thought of.