First of all there was the Colonel himself,--Colonel Edgar Fitzmaurice, C.B., D.S.O.,--easily the most popular member of the club, a distinguished retired officer, white-haired, kindly and genial, a man of whom no one had ever heard another say an unkind word, whose hand was always in his none too well-filled pockets, and whose sympathies were always ready to be enlisted in any forlorn cause, deserving or otherwise.

At his right hand sat Wrayson; on his left Sydney Mason, a rising young sculptor, and also a popular member of this somewhat Bohemian circle.

Opposite was Stephen Heneage, a man of a different and more secretive type.

He called himself a barrister, but he never practised; a journalist at times, but he seldom put his name to anything he wrote.

His interests, if he had any, he kept to himself.