“Is it a real German victory?” I asked.

“If it isn’t I don’t know what you’d call it, though such of the English as I saw were in gay enough spirits, and there was not an atmosphere of defeat.  Fact is—­I kept out of sight and only got stray impressions.  Go on down now, or they’ll guess something.  I’m not going to say a word—­yet.  Awful sorry now I told you.  Force of habit.”

I went down.  I had hard work for a few minutes to throw the impression off.  But the garden was lovely, and tea being over, we all busied ourselves in rifling the flowerbeds to dress the dinner table.  If we were going in two days, where was the good of leaving the flowers to die alone?  I don’t suppose that it was strange that the table conversation was all reminiscent.  We talked of the old days:  of ourselves when we were boys and girls together:  of old Papanti, and our first Cotillion, of Class Days, and, I remembered afterward, that not one of us talked of ourselves except in the days of our youth.

When the coffee came out, we looked about laughing to see which of the three of us left was to tell the story.  The Lawyer coughed, tapped himself on his chest, and crossed his long legs.

* * * * *

It was a cold December afternoon.

The air was piercing.

There had been a slight fall of snow, then a sudden drop in the thermometer preceded nightfall.

Miss Moreland, wrapped in her furs, was standing on a street corner, looking in vain for a cab, and wondering, after all, why she had ventured out.

It was somewhat later than she had supposed, and she was just conventional enough, in spite of her pose to the exact contrary, to hope that none of her friends would pass.  She knew her set well enough to know that it would cause something almost like a scandal if she were seen out alone, on foot, on the very eve of her wedding day, when all well bred brides ought to be invisible—­repenting their sins, and praying for blessings on the future in theory, but in reality, fussing themselves ill over belated finery.

She had had for some years a number of poor protegees in the lower end of the city, which she had been accustomed to visit on work of a charitable nature begun when she was a school girl.  She had found work enough to do there ever since.

It was work of which her father, a hard headed man of business, strongly disapproved, although he was ready enough to give his money.  Jack was of her father’s mind.  She realized that when she returned from the three years’ trip round the world, on which she was starting the day after her wedding, she would have other duties, and she knew it would be harder to oppose Jack,—­and more dangerous—­than it had been to oppose her father.