"You'll tell us—when there's anything to tell?" begged his mother, as they went down to dinner; and Eric felt that he might have saved his elaborate prevarications for a more gullible audience. Sir Francis made no direct allusion throughout the week-end, but, as they sat over their wine on the first night, he enquired spasmodically how old Eric was, how much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures he had in contemplation.
It was a relief to walk over to Red Roofs next day and have tea with Agnes Waring and her father. For an hour he was spared even indirect references to the unhappy interview, though in his over-sensitive condition he fancied that Agnes was unwontedly frigid in manner, as though a new barrier had been placed between them. Conversation centred about her brother. Humanly speaking, he would be released from Switzerland within a few weeks and would come either to Paris or London; he was, of course, debarred from active service, but the War Office would no doubt test his capabilities of health and brain either in Whitehall or at the Ministère de la Guerre. Eric could count on seeing him almost any day—in England, or, if he could invent a mission, in Paris.
Only when she had walked through the garden to send him on his way across the fields did Agnes touch on the offending article. They were standing on opposite sides of a sun-dial at the end of a fruit-walk; and both were recalling the earlier Sundays when Eric had asked with sympathetically lowered voice: "No news of Jack, I suppose?"
"You're looking as if you wanted a holiday," Agnes volunteered.
"I've been rather worried lately," Eric answered vaguely.
"Not about that——" She looked at him and moved round, slipping her hand through his arm. "I shouldn't worry about a thing like that! She's so well-known that the papers are on to her like cats on a mouse.… I liked her that night I met her, Eric."
"It makes my relations with her rather difficult," he laughed.
"But all you've got to do is not to meet her!" Agnes explained in a tone of convincing reason.
"She's—one of the greatest friends I've got," he said.
Agnes rubbed gently at the tarnished motto on the dial.