They drank a cocktail together, and the sense of unreality began to fall away. Once more the earth was firm beneath Harvey Grimm's feet.
"The money I have wasted!" he groaned. "Why, I had a young actor establishing alibis for me all the time I was away! ... Where's Aaron?"
"Just back from the North Sea with my sister," De Floge replied. "He will tell you a story that will make your hair stand on end."
"And the poet?"
"Down with an Officers' Training Corps. He is coming up to lunch, if he can get off."
Harvey Grimm glanced at the clock. His companion interpreted his thoughts.
"You have an hour," he said.
"A shave and a bath," the other murmured ecstatically.
"And the corner table as you come in, in the grill-room," De Floge added. "We will all meet there at one-thirty...."
Some time before the hour had elapsed Harvey Grimm was entirely his usual self. Shaved and bathed, clad in one of his favourite blue serge suits, patent shoes and spotless gaiters, a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, a sense of stupefied but immeasurable satisfaction radiating from him, he took his place at the round luncheon table, between Aaron Rodd and Henriette, and raised the glass of amber liquid which he found waiting there, to his lips. De Floge, however, checked him.