“Mrs. Nevin, you’re a little too young to be my mother, aren’t you, just as dear Michael is much too old to be my lover! Hugh doesn’t stand in the relation to me, either, that you imply. He’s not a guardian, or anything like that. We are dear friends, as I told you. And now that I’ve got my job, he isn’t even my host. You’re all mixed up.” Ariel turned toward the window, which was open, in one swift motion of flight. But she did not fly. She was civilized. She would say a proper good-by to her hostess and depart with dignity by the door. Joan stood up, with slightly delayed protests. Ariel heard her own voice asking a question that she did not want to ask, but it was as uncontrollable as her first motion of flight had been. “Mrs. Nevin, are you engaged to Hugh? Were you meaning that too?” Joan restrained a smile, but _obviously_ restrained it. “No, dear child,” she replied. “But I have a refusal. If you know what that means. It’s a term used largely in real estate, I believe. Must you go?” “I hope I’m not hurrying you!” Joan and Ariel turned in surprise toward the unexpected voice. Prescott Enderly had come in soundlessly, and was just at Ariel’s elbow. Joan exclaimed, “But how did you get here like this, unannounced? I’m not at home. Where’s Parks? And what are you doing away from college?” “One word answers them all,” Enderly replied. “Spring! Parks must be out somewhere watching the tulips grow. Anyway, the door was unguarded. In the spring nothing goes according to pattern, even your housekeeping, Joan.” Joan gave him her hand. He had nodded at Ariel and she at him. Ariel was seeing him as the person who had caused Anne all that anguish. His sea-blue eyes, crinkled now with a forced smile, the lines in his cheeks that just escaped being dimples and gave sympathy to his face, his eager sensitive body, his full, sensuous but sensitive lips,—these she was seeing with Anne’s eyes. But he was shockingly white. The man was simply beside himself, she felt, with some deep emotion. Joan was a bit short with him. “I wasn’t meaning to see any one to-day,” she said. “I’m even dining alone to-night. But yes—you may stay. You’ve come so far. I’d rather you called first on the telephone, however. Surprises always put me off a little. Do they you, Ariel? Some people they do.” “Joan, you are wonderful not to turn me out. But I’d have come, even if there was only one chance in ten thousand of your seeing me. If I’d called on the telephone, there wasn’t even that chance, I felt. You are a saint to put up with me.” They seemed hardly aware when Ariel said her polite say about the tea Joan had given her and departed. She might have used the window after all and no one noticed. From the door she glanced back and saw them on the sofa, Enderly bent forward, holding both of Mrs. Nevin’s hands in his, his eyes blue sea fire, his face still paper white. Neither of them was speaking.