Of course I could lie; and I suppose some men, even men of honour, would think it justifiable as well as wise to lie in such a case, when explanations were forbidden.  But I couldn’t lie to a girl I loved as I love Diana Forrest.  It would have sickened me with life and with myself to do it:  and it was with the knowledge in my mind that I could not and would not lie, that I had to greet her with a conventional “Good morning.”

“Are you going out of town?” I asked, with my hat off for her and for the Imp, whose strange little weazened face I now saw looking over my tall love’s shoulders.  It had never before struck me that the Imp was like a cat; but suddenly the resemblance struck me—­something in the poor little creature’s expression, it must have been, or in her greenish grey eyes which seemed at that moment to concentrate all the knowledge of old and evil things that has ever come into the world since the days of the early Egyptians—­when a cat was worshipped.

“No, I’m not going out of town,” Di answered.  “I came here to meet you, in case you should be leaving by this train, and I brought Lisa with me.”

“Who told you I was leaving?” I asked, hoping for a second or two that the Foreign Secretary had confided to her something of his secret—­guessing ours, perhaps, and that my unexpected, inexplicable absence might injure me with her.

“I can’t tell you,” she answered.  “I didn’t believe you would go; even though I got your letter by the eight o’clock post this morning.”

“I’m glad you got that,” I said.  “I posted it soon after I left you last night.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when we were bidding each other good-bye, that you wouldn’t be able to see me this afternoon, instead of waiting to write?”

“Frankly and honestly,” I said (for I had to say it), “just at the moment, and only for the moment, I forgot about the Duchess of Glasgow’s bazaar.  That was because, after I decided to drop in at the bazaar, something happened which made it impossible for me to go.  In my letter I begged you to let me see you to-morrow instead; and now I beg it again.  Do say ‘yes.’”

“I’ll say yes on one condition—­and gladly,” she replied, with an odd, pale little smile, “that you tell me where you’re going this morning.  I know it must seem horrid in me to ask, but—­but—­oh, Ivor, it isn’t horrid, really.  You wouldn’t think it horrid if you could understand.”

“I’m going to Paris,” I answered, beginning to feel as if I had a cold potato where my heart ought to be.  “I am obliged to go, on business.”

“You didn’t say anything about Paris in your letter this morning, when you told me you couldn’t come to the Duchess’s,” said Di, looking like a beautiful, unhappy child, her eyes big and appealing, her mouth proud.  “You only mentioned ‘an urgent engagement which you’d forgotten.’”

“I thought that would be enough to explain, in a hurry,” I told her, lamely.