"Am I?" she laid her other hand over his, considering him earnestly. Ailsa looking on, astonished, noticed a singular radiance on his face--the pale transfiguration from some quick inward illumination. Then Celia Craig's voice sounded almost caressingly: "I think you should have come to see us long ago." A pause. "You are as welcome in this house as your mother would be if she were living. I love and honour her memory." "I have honoured little else in the world," he said. They looked at one another for a moment; then her quick smile broke out. "I have an album. There are some Paiges, Ormonds, and Berkleys in it----" Ailsa came forward slowly. "Shall I look for it, Celia?" "No, Honey-bell." She turned lightly and went into the back parlour, smiling mysteriously to herself, her vast, pale-blue crinoline rustling against the furniture. "My sister-in-law," said Ailsa, after an interval of silent constraint, "is very Southern. Any sort of kinship means a great deal to her. I, of course, am Northern, and regard such matters as unimportant." "It is very gracious of Mrs. Craig to remember it," he said. "I know nothing finer than confidence in one's own kin." She flushed angrily. "I have not that confidence--in kinsman." For a moment their eyes met. Hers were hard as purple steel. "Is that final?" "Yes." The muscles in his cheeks grew tense, then into his eyes came that reckless glimmer which in the beginning she had distrusted--a gay, irresponsible radiance which seemed to mock at all things worthy. He said: "No, it is not final. I shall come back to you." She answered him in an even, passionless voice: "A moment ago I was uncertain; now I know you. You are what they say you are. I never wish to see you again." Celia Craig came back with the album. Berkley sprang to relieve her of the big book and a box full of silhouettes, miniatures, and daguerreotypes. They placed the family depository upon the table and then bent over it together. Ailsa remained standing by the window, looking steadily at nothing, a burning sensation in both cheeks. At intervals, through the intensity of her silence, she heard Celia's fresh, sweet laughter, and Berkley's humorous and engaging voice. She glanced sideways at the back of his dark curly head where it bent beside Celia's over the album. What an insolently reckless head it was! She thought that she had never before seen the back of any man's head so significant of character--or the want of it. And the same quality--or the lack of it--now seemed to her to pervade his supple body, his well-set shoulders, his voice, every movement, every feature--something everywhere about him that warned and troubled. [Illustration: "What an insolently reckless head it was!"] Suddenly the blood burnt her cheeks with a perfectly incomprehensible desire to see his face again. She heard her sister-in-law saying: