The friends found a corner with a big plush couch which took three of them, and a chair for Alex.  A waiter bustled up and they ordered drinks, which came on little saucers marked with the price.  Peter lay back luxuriously.

“Chin-chin,” said the other Australian, and the others responded.

“That’s good,” said Pennell.

“Not so many girls here this afternoon,” remarked Alex carelessly.  “See, Dick, there’s that little Levantine with the thick dark hair.  She’s caught somebody.”

Peter looked across in the direction indicated.  The girl, in a cerise costume with a big black hat, short skirt, and dainty bag, was sitting in a chair halfway on to them and leaning over the table before her.  As he watched, she threw her head back and laughed softly.  He caught the gleam of a white throat and of dark sloe eyes.

“She’s a pretty one,” said Pennell.  “God! but they’re queer little bits of fluff, these girls.  It beats me how they’re always gay, and always easy to get and to leave.  And they get rottenly treated sometimes.”

“Yes I’m damned if I understand them,” said Alex.  “Now, padre, I’ll tell you something that’s more in your way than mine, and you can see what you make of it.  I was in a maison toleree the other day—­you know the sort of thing—­and there were half a dozen of us in the sitting-room with the girls, drinking fizz.  I had a little bit of a thing with fair hair—­she couldn’t have been more than seventeen at most, I reckon—­with a laugh that did you good to hear, and, by gum! we wanted to be cheered just then, for we had had a bit of a gruelling on the Ancre and had been pulled out of the line to refit.  She sat there with an angel’s face, a chemise transparent except where it was embroidered, and not much else, and some of the women were fair beasts.  Well, she moved on my knee, and I spilt some champagne and swore—­’Jesus Christ!’ I said.  Do you know, she pushed back from me as if I had hit her!  ‘Oh, don’t say His Name!’ she said.  ’Promise me you won’t say it again.  Do you not know how He loved us?’ I was so taken aback that I promised, and to tell you the truth, padre, I haven’t said it since.  What do you think of that?”

Peter shook his head and drained his glass.  He couldn’t have spoken at once; the little story, told in such a place, struck him so much.  Then he asked:  “But is that all?  How did she come to be there?”

“Well,” Alex said, “that’s just as strange.  Father was in a French cavalry regiment, and got knocked out on the Marne.  They lived in Arras before the war, and you can guess that there wasn’t much left of the home.  One much older sister was a widow with a big family; the other was a kid of ten or eleven, so this one went into the business to keep the family going.  Fact.  The mother used to come and see her, and I got to know her.  She didn’t seem to mind:  said the doctors looked after them well, and the girl was making good money.  Hullo!” he broke off, “there’s Louise,” and to Peter’s horror he half-rose and smiled across at a girl some few tables away.