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said that confusion prevailed in the hall, if its emptiness had not made the word incongruous. At last a waiter with rumpled hair strayed out of the restaurant, and of him, imperiously, Campton demanded the concierge.

"The concierge? He's gone."

"To get my places for Naples?"

The waiter looked blank. "Gone: mobilised—to join his regiment. It's the war."

"But look here, some one must have attended to getting my places, I suppose," cried Campton wrathfully. He invaded the inner office and challenged a secretary who was trying to deal with several unmanageable travellers, but who explained to him, patiently, that his sleepings had certainly not been engaged, as no trains were leaving Paris for the present. "Not for civilian travel," he added, still more patiently.

Campton had a sudden sense of suffocation. No trains leaving Paris "for the present"? But then people like himself—people who had nothing on earth to do with the war—had been caught like rats in a trap! He reflected with a shiver that Mrs. Brant would not be able to return to Deauville, and would probably insist on his coming to see her every day. He asked: "How long is this preposterous state of things to last?"—but no one answered, and he stalked to the lift and had himself carried up-stairs.

He was confident that George would be there wait-