“It is a fair mess,” she admitted blandly.  “I was just trying to get things a bit together when you rang, sir.  I’m to throw away all that old stuff, he said.  A reg’lar new start he’s making—­and a lively one, I don’t think.  Theatres and supper parties ever since he’s been back, sir, and right glad I’ve been to see it, though I don’t ’old with carryings-on, in a general way.  But after them there tropiks he’d need a change.  He was that down, sir, when he first came, I didn’t know what to think.”

The room might have belonged to a young dandy returned to London from the wilds of Central Africa.  It was littered with half-open boxes, new suits, a disorderly regiment of shining, unworn boots and shoes, a pile of ties that must have been chosen for sheer expensiveness. (Stonehouse remembered the spotted affair with which Cosgrave had wooed Connie Edward’s approval.) The shabby suit in which Stonehouse had first met him had been flung with the other cast-offs into a far corner.  It was all very young and reckless and jolly.  One could see the owner, as he rampaged about the room, whistling and cursing in a good-humoured haste.

“’Ere’s ’is writing-table; I’ll just make room for you, sir——­”

He stopped her.

“It doesn’t matter.  If he’s to be at the Carlton I’ll probably look him up myself.”

“Dining early, he said, sir—­seven o’clock.”

“Yes—­thank you.”

A folded, grey-tinted letter lay half hidden in the general melee.  It had a bold, irrepressible look, as though it were aware of having blown the room to smithereens and was rather amused.  Stonehouse could see the large, sprawling hand that covered it.  He touched it, not knowing why—­nor yet that he was angry.  Something that had been asleep in him for a long time stirred uneasily and stretched itself.

“Ladies”—­his companion simpered—–­“always the ladies, sir.”

Stonehouse laughed.

An hour later he was waiting for Cosgrave in the Carlton lounge.  He had never been in the place before—­or in any place like it—­and it confused and astonished him.  He was like a monk who had come unprepared into the crude noise and glitter of a society desperately pleasure-seeking.  He could regard the men and women round him with contempt, but not with indifference, for they represented a force against which he had not yet tried himself except in theory.  And they set a new standard.  Here his life and his attainments were of no account.  What mattered was that he wore his travelling clothes, and that he stood stockily in the gangway like a man who does not know what is expected of him.  It was ridiculous, but it was true that he became ashamed.

But he held his ground stubbornly.  He was not aware of any definite plan or expectation.  If he had asked himself what he intended he would have said he meant to look after Cosgrave, who was in a bad way.  As a friend and as a doctor he had the right.  He would not have admitted that his own personality had become involved, that he had felt himself obscurely challenged.