Easy enough, but it didn’t come off. Mrs. Trevor developed one of her “attacks.” The play bored her, and she considered that Tom had been rude. She became faint, threatened a swoon, and said she must go. Since they had come in James’ car, he had perforce to drive them home. He had seen Carmona Leigh, and that was all.

He left at cockcrow next morning for the Middle East, and he was away for more than a year.

It was on the day after his return that he saw her again. He was on his way to stay with the Trevors. They would put him up, and he would walk over and see his Aunt Mildred Wotherspoon whose elderly devoted and tyrannical maid no longer allowed her to have anyone to stay in the house. The last time it had been attempted had been so unpleasant for everyone concerned that by tacit consent it was agreed that there should be no repetition, James writing that the Trevors had offered to put him up, and Miss Wotherspoon replying that that would be very nice, and that she hoped he would come over to tea.

He sat in the train and thought that it was good to be back. The odd thing about coming home was that you didn’t expect anything to have changed. You went away, and things happened to you, but you somehow didn’t expect that anything very much would have happened to the people you had left behind. Old Tom Trevor would be growing prize delphiniums, carnations, and dahlias, and Maisie would be finding it dull in the country and giving him no peace about coming up to town for an occasional week to look up old friends and go the round of the theatres. Aunt Mildred would be in the middle of one of her rows with Janet. They had been going on ever since he could remember, and both parties appeared to derive considerable satisfaction from the exercise. Everything in their little world would be just as it had been before he went away.