Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies.  Could he have chosen the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named October.  For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants.  But there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown hill-sides and rusty grass, the little rich fields in the frames of their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their emerald branches in the sunlight.  Hillyard travelled up through Kent rejoicing.  He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.

But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident.  The brass plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew.  They were, however, as unaware as of old of any Commodore Graham.  Was he quite certain that he wanted to see Commodore Graham.  And why?  And, after all, was there a Commodore Graham?  Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every apparent desire to assist this sunburnt stranger.  It seemed to Hillyard that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom he chose to name.  It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham.  Oh, couldn’t he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?

“Very well,” said Hillyard with a smile.  “There was a pretty girl with grey eyes, and I’ll see her.”

“The description is vague,” said the young lady demurely.

“She is Miss Cheyne.”

“Oh!” said one.

“Oh!” said another; and

“Will you follow me, please?” said a third, who at once became business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs.  The door was still unvarnished.  Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought admission first.  But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles, when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.

“The Commodore’s away for a week,” she said.  “He had come to the end:  no sleep, nerves all jangled.  He is up in Scotland shooting grouse.”

Hillyard nodded.  His news could wait a week very well, since it had waited already two years.

“And you?” he asked.

“Oh, I had a fortnight,” replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the recollection.  It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out towards the Island.  “Not a day of rain during the whole time.”

“I think that I might have a month then, don’t you?” said Hillyard, and Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.