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“Oh, it’s not as bad as that,” she answered.

In reality her thoughts were in another direction. She was thinking of her cousin, Tom Gabel, who was an attaché at the embassy in Madrid. He had now been home for two months on a visit and had promised to come and fetch them so as to go together to the dinner.

“Hurry up,” she said, “so that Tom won’t have to wait for you.”

“I’m all ready,” he replied.

He had sat down in a corner in the shadow, fully dressed. She turned and scanned his attire.

“You’ve forgotten your decoration,” she remarked.

“I don’t want my decoration,” he responded.

“But Richard! could you be so discourteous to Tom, who got it for you?”

He went after his decoration. It was not one of the very worst, not an order of Christus or a Nichan Iftikar; it was a medium good decoration, a quite nice decoration. He fastened it on the lapel of his coat with the feeling that perhaps he really needed it, seeing that he had a blue anchor on his left hand.

There was a dance after the dinner, but Fant remained sitting in a sofa corner of the smoking-room. By his side sat the man whom he had formerly annoyed by staring at his foreign decoration, but he was now a Knight Commander. They had become good friends and called each other by their first names when they said anything to each other, but they said nothing. They merely sat each in his corner of the sofa and smoked big cigars with labels and understood each other perfectly.