and then as though the words choked her she turned back into the inner room. Peter saw Mr. Zanti's face and it was puckered with distress like a child's. It was almost laughable in its helpless dismay.
Two o'clock struck. “They'll be starting in half an hour,” Herr Gottfried said.
“Women,” Mr. Zanti said, still looking distressfully about him, “they are, in truth, very difficult.”
And now there was no pretence, any longer, of disguising the nervous tension that was with them in the room. They were all waiting for something—what it might be Peter did not know, but, with every tick of the old brass clock, some event crept more nearly towards them.
Then Stephen came back.
He came in very quietly as though he were trying to keep the note of agitation that he must have felt on every side of him as near the normal as possible.
His face above his beard was grey and streaky and his breath came rapidly as though he had been running. When he saw Mr. Zanti his hand went up suddenly in front of his face as though he would protect himself from the other's questioning.
“I've 'eard nothing—” he said almost sullenly and then he turned and looked at Peter.
“Why must 'e be 'ere?” he said sharply to Zanti.
“Why not? Where else?” the other answered and the two men watched each other with hostility across the floor.
“I wish we'd all bloomin' wull kept out of it,” Stephen murmured to himself it seemed.
Peter's eyes were upon Mr. Zanti. That gentleman looked more like a naughty child than ever. In his eyes there was the piteous appeal of a small boy about to be punished for some grievous fault. In some strange way Peter was, it appeared, his court of appeal because he glanced towards him again and again and then looked away.
Peter could stand it no longer. He got up from the place where he was and faced them all.
“What is it? What have you all done? What is the matter with you all?”
The Russian girl had come back. Her face was white and her hair fell untidily about her eyes. She came for-
