business people, literary people, and a few politicians of the same colour as the Pinkerton press.  There were a lot of dreadful women, who, I supposed, were Lady Pinkerton’s friends (probably literary women; one of them was introduced to Juke as ’the editress of Forget-me-not’), and a lot of vulgar men, many of whom looked like profiteers.  But, besides all these, there were undoubtedly interesting people and people of importance.  And I realised that the editor of the Haste, like the other editors of important papers, must, of necessity, as Katherine had said, have a lot to do with such people.

And there, in the middle of a group of journalists, was Jane; Jane, in a square-cut, high-waisted, dead white frock, with her firm, round, young shoulders and arms, and her firm, round, young face, and her dark hair cut across her broad white forehead, parted a little like a child’s, at one side, and falling thick and straight round her neck like a mediaeval page’s.  She wore a long string of big amber beads—­Hobart’s present—­and a golden girdle round her high, sturdy waist.

I saw Jane in a sense newly that evening, not having seen her for some time.  And I saw her again as I had often seen her in the past—­a greedy, lazy, spoilt child, determined to take and keep the best out of life, and, if possible, pay nothing for it.  A profiteer, as much as the fat little match manufacturer, her uncle, who was talking to Hobart, and in whom I saw a resemblance to the twins.  And I saw too Jane’s queer, lazy, casual charm, that had caught and held Hobart and weaned him from the feminine graces and obviousnesses of Clare.

Hobart stood near Jane, quiet and agreeable and good-looking.  A second-rate chap, running a third-rate paper.  Jane had married him, for all her clear-headed intellectual scorn of the second-rate, because she was second-rate herself, and didn’t really care.

And there was little Pinkerton chatting with Northcliffe, his rival and friend, and Lady Pinkerton boring a high Foreign Office official very nearly to yawns, and Clare Potter, flushed and gallantly gay, flitting about from person to person (Clare was always restless; she had none of Jane’s phlegm and stolidity), and Johnny, putting in a fairly amusing time with his own friends and acquaintances, and Frank Potter talking to Juke about his new parish.  Frank, discontented all the war because he couldn’t get out to France without paying the price that Juke had paid, was satisfied with life for the moment, having just been given a fashionable and rich London living, where many hundreds weekly sat under him and heard him preach.  Juke wasn’t the member of that crowd I should personally have selected to discuss fashionable and overpaid livings with, had I just accepted one, but they were the only two parsons in the room, so I suppose Potter thought it appropriate, I overheard pleased fragments such as ’Twenty thousand communicants ... only standing-room at Sunday evensong,’ which indicated that the new parish was a great success.