heard a precise little voice say, "No, I'm afraid I don't!" He caught in it a hint of adverse criticism directed against the new-comer who had taken the army under her wing, and who at this moment was saying, "Hey, don't bother me, can't you see I'm talkin' to a Earl!" The precise little voice had belonged to Beatie Markwick, and she was skilfully steering Pat Coyle away from the American Circe.
"Ça colle!" said Paul to himself exultantly. "Ça colle!" Pat's future was in safe hands.
Gritty Kestrell exemplified an attitude towards life which compelled Paul's admiration. At sea he had lived amongst men for whom morality was a mere question of lack of opportunity. In Vienna he had rubbed shoulders with Bohemians whose conventionality consisted in conscientiously damning morality. In Cairo men and women wore their morality in public as Moslem women wore veils. As for Gritty she seemed sublimely and refreshingly immune from moral cares. She could be dainty and she could be gross, Her acts were the reflex expression of whatever urge happened to be in the ascendancy. The subtle standard of expediency that served most women in lieu of a code formed a quite negligible part of her impedimenta. She had apparently come to the conclusion that honesty was the best policy, and she had the strength of character without which an honest policy is suicidal. She was immoral, but not frail.
If Gritty had glossed over certain phases of her career on the first evening of her reunion with Paul, she made no bones of it during the pleasant days that followed. She accepted the superficial philosophy summed up by the heroine of a smart play she had seen: "A girl is not a sinner just because she's not a saint." But for that mat-
