Katherine looked across the room. She was startled. So this⁠—was Derek, and she realised that she was not surprised. She had always known that she would some day meet the man whom she had seen three times by such a curious chain of coincidences. She thought, too, that he recognised her. He paused abruptly in what he was saying to Lady Tamplin, and went on again as though with an effort. They all went in to dinner, and Katherine found that he was placed beside her. He turned to her at once with a vivid smile.

“I knew I was going to meet you soon,” he remarked, “but I never dreamt that it would be here. It had to be, you know. Once at the Savoy and once at Cook’s⁠—never twice without three times. Don’t say you can’t remember me or never noticed me. I insist upon your pretending that you noticed me, anyway.”

“Oh, I did,” said Katherine; “but this is not the third time. It is the fourth. I saw you on the Blue Train.”