"But they've fixed a rehearsal for ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
"That certainly does complicate matters. And I suppose, in any case, you'd rather not have to play in public immediately after a long railway journey."
"How do you know I play?" demanded Nan. "It's just conceivable I might be a singer!"
A distinct twinkle showed behind the monocle.
"There are quite a number of 'conceivable' things about you. But I heard Miss Nan Davenant play several times during the war—at concerts where special seats were allotted to the wounded. I'm sorry to say I haven't heard you lately. I've only just come back from America."
"Oh, were you in the war?" she asked quickly.
"Why, naturally." He smiled a little. "I was perfectly sound in wind and limb—then."
Nan flushed suddenly. She knew of one man who had taken no fighting part. Maryon Rooke's health was apparently more delicate than anyone had imagined, and his artistes hands were, so he explained, an asset to the country, not to be risked like hands made of commoner clay. This holding back on his part had been the thing that had tortured Nan more than anything else during the long years of the war, in spite of the reasons he had offered in explanation, not least of which was the indispensability of his services at Whitehall—in which he genuinely believed.
"It's simply a choice between using brains or brawn as cannon-fodder," he used to say. "I'm serving with my brain instead of with my body."
And Nan, attracted by Rooke's odd fascination, had womanlike, tried to believe this and to thrust aside any thoughts that were disloyal to her faith in him. But, glancing now at the clever, clean-cut face of the man beside her, with its whimsical, sensitive mouth and steady eyes, she realised that he, at least, had kept nothing back—had offered brain and body equally to his country.