Page:Anstey--Tourmalin's time cheques.djvu/71

Rh ang—one more interview, the last, with one or other of his amiable and fascinating friends—it did not matter very much which—presented itself in a more and more attractive light. If it did nothing else, it would provide him with something to think about for the rest of the evening.

Was it courteous, was it even right, to drop his friends without the slightest apology or explanation? Ought he not, as a gentleman and a man of honor, to go back and bid them "Good-by?" Peter, after carefully considering the point, discovered that it was clearly his duty to perform this trifling act of civility.

As soon as he had settled that, he got out his cheque-book from the dispatch-box, in which he had placed it for his own security, and, sitting down just as he was, drew another fifteen minutes, and cashed them, like the first, at the ormolu clock. …

This time he found himself sitting on a cushioned bench in the music-room of the Boomerang. It was shortly after sunset, as he could tell from the bar of dusky crimson against the violet sea, which, framed in the ports opposite, rose and sank with each roll of