“Don’t speak of Kathleen in this house.  It makes me want to bolt for home.  Not that she’d look at me if I did.  But the contrast between her and Ena Rolls—­good Lord, it doesn’t bear thinking of!  Nothing doing about the Lady in the Moon so far as I’m concerned.  It’s Rolls who got moonstruck—­according to his sister.  Now can you guess whom I mean?”

Eileen’s pleasant, plain little face flushed up.

“Oh, the Nadine girl on the ship!  The one who looked so nice in the Moon dress.  Petro bought it—­for Ena.  And she gave it to that fascinating girl.  She—­Ena, I mean—­told me all about it.”

“And about the girl, too?”

“What was there to tell?”

“Blamed if I know.  But Ena was hinting dark things this afternoon.  That’s why I was wondering whether he’d opened out to you.  You’re such pals.”

Eileen shook her head.  She was not looking quite so bright as when Rags had first come into the overheated, overlighted, overdecorated room.  But perhaps this was only because he had set her to thinking intently.  “No, he’s never spoken of the Lady in the Moon.  Let me think—­what was her name?”

“Miss Child.”

“You seem to remember very well—­you, who mix up all the wrong names with the right faces.”

“But I saw her to-day.  I forgot—­I haven’t told you of that yet, have I?”

“No.  Where was it?”

“Wait a minute.  Strictly speaking, I oughtn’t to tell you, I suppose.  All the same I will—­for a reason—­if you’ll promise first not to mention it to Rolls.  Never mind why not, but promise, if you want to know.”

“Of course I want to know.  You make me fearfully curious.  I’ll promise not to breathe a word to Petro.”

“Where the girl is or anything about her?”

“‘Where the girl is, or anything about her.’  Honour bright.  Is that enough?  Well, then—­go on!”

“She’s in the shop—­employed there, it seems.  We met her in the lift, Ena and I. It was a surprise all round.  Ena wasn’t overjoyed.  No more was the Lady in the Moon.  They got rid of each other quickly and skilfully.  Afterward, Ena buttonholed me and sat me down on a hard settee in a beastly furnished room like a rathskeller, with price tags on everything, and made me solemnly swear not to split to Rolls.”

“About your meeting Miss Child?”

“Ra-ther! And all the rest of it.”

“What rest?”

“A lot of rubbish.  I don’t know what she was driving at, I’m hanged if I do.  But if I didn’t like Rolls, I’d suspect.”

“But you do like him.  And so do I.”

“I’ve noticed that.  So would Mubs, if she ever noticed anything that didn’t wave suffragette colours.”

“And I shall go on liking him—­’right straight on,’ as he’d say himself.  Nothing that Ena or anybody else could tell me would make me believe a word against him.  And the girl’s nice, too.  I’m sure she is.  But how too endlessly quaint she should be in the shop.”