It was the "then" that wrinkled Hibben's brow and tensed his mouth. The "then" became an obstacle and yet it must be met. His lips moved framing the phrase "Get along with it!" and he seized upon a thread of recollection to follow it painstakingly.

"Might as well get acquainted!" observed Tate, exchanging a wink with the lance-corporal. "It's there we'll be having tomorrow night's party!"

The wink! Recollection of it caught onto a sharp corner of the guardsman's consciousness like a fragment of cleaning lint on the firing-pin of his Enfield. Then it floated free as he became suddenly aware that this was the night when six chaps of his own company and a scattering from the others had arranged to gather at the Granby. It was to be a send-off for Sergeant Watts. Poor Watts, transferred out and shipping down to Warminster-that mud hole! Hibben knew and liked Watts, so too the others from his own company, but all the other names were strange to him. He hadn't even known that there was any fraternizing among the companies. Then he shrugged unhappily. There'd be no party for him tonight, so why think about it?

Now he was struck by the very fact that he had been considering it; had actually contemplated joining the group at the Marquis of Granby. How could he have forgotten his introduction to the pub less than twenty-four hours agoand his reaction to it!

When first his comrades had suggested the bar he had demurred. He'd had enough of "the drink" 'til weekend. Besides, he'd half promised Annie Willis he would call.

This commitment was rather like a self-imposed obligation, for he knew intuitively that Annie wouldn't much care if he did or didn't telephone. Things had gone to the bad between Annie and him. Clumsy was the derogatory label he hung upon his handling of that business, and clumsiness plus continued embarrassed missions had lately evoked chill pique in the girl. He must remedy that situation, for Annie was a darling-not many with the smile and dash of Annie-and a figure like an angel-Annie was a dream.

Kenneth Hibben had tried to leave his friends, but those two would have none of it! In the end he'd gone along. The pub, he presently discovered, for all its posh name, was a down-at-heels local. Within, the walls and furnishings were obscured by smoke and a press of bodies that now made him recall the hives at swarming time in his native Devon. Suddenly there had come the devastating revulsion!

In one brief flash he had taken in the knot of figures directly in his path and the stares of appraisal cast at him and his companions. He had taken another step forward and come aware. That pressure, casual yet insistant, could not have been accidental; nor was there apology for the unbelievable intimacy. He had twisted about and struggled to the doors, thence into the waning dusk outside.

N

OW looking from the barracks windows he could catch glimpses of the palace through the plane trees. Buckingham where he had disgraced himself the company too, his sergeant would say. Abruptly he turned from the windows, aware that he'd caught himself up in futile digression; an attempt to escape that obsessive need to look back into yesterday.

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