CHAPTER III

IT was a Monday morning and a bank holiday. A few regular habitues of the park, to whom the word ‘holiday’ had no especial significance, had overlooked the fact and took their cantering exercise a little self-consciously under admiring eyes of the people who seldom saw people riding on horseback for the pleasure of it. The day was fine and warm, the hawthorn trees were thickly frosted with their cerise and white blossoms; stiff crocuses flamed in every bed, and the banners of the daffodils fluttered in the light breeze that blew half-heartedly across the wide green spaces. On every path the holiday-makers struggled, small mothers laden with large babies; shop-boys in garments secretly modelled on the supermen they served; girls from the stores in their bargain-price finery; young men with and without hats, the waitresses of closed tea-shops, and here and there a pompous member of the bourgeoisie conscious of his superiority to the crowd with which, in his condescension, he mingled.

There is one shady place which faces Park Lane—a stretch of wooded lawn where garden-chairs are set six deep. Behind this phalanx there is an irregular fringe of seats, usually in couples, and greatly in request during the darker hours. In the early morning, before the energies of the promenaders are exhausted, the spot is deserted. But two young people occupied chairs this morning. There was nothing in the appearance of the girl that would have made the companionship seem incongruous. In her tailored costume, the unobtrusive hat and the simplicity of the toilette, she might as well have been the youngest daughter of a duke, or a work-girl with a judgement in dress. Her clothes would not be ‘priced’ by the most expert of woman critics, and even stockings and shoes, the last hope of the appraiser, would have baffled.

No two glandes would have been required to put the man in his class. If he was a thought dandified, it was the dandification of a gentleman. He looked what he was, a man of leisure; the type which is to be found in the Guards, or the smartest regiment of cavalry. Yet Ronald Morelle was no soldier. He had served during the war, but had seen none of its devastations. He hated the violence of battle and despised the vulgarity of a noisy patriotism. His knowledge of Italian had secured him a quasi-diplomatic appointment, nominally at Italian headquarters, actually in Rome. He had used every influence that could be employed, pulled every string that could be pulled, to keep him from the disorder of the front line, and fortune had favoured him to an extraordinary extent. On the very day he received instructions to report to the reg