“What?” He had forgotten already about the coat. “Oh! Why, yes, more than I had expected, but I don’t believe more than it’s worth. The only difficulty was that I thought I had enough with me, but I hadn’t, and so it meant bothering the people at my office. But it doesn’t matter. And now, Ariel, I can begin to enjoy your company, without worry.” At the end of another half block he added, “And you will call me Hugh, please, or I shall have to Miss-Clare you.” It was not yet four o’clock when they got to the “Carnation,” so they had the place almost to themselves. Ariel poured out the tea from a chubby carnation-painted pot, and felt, almost, that it was five years ago and she was offering the studio’s hospitality to a hawklike, rather silent new friend of her father’s. But she had only to look across the little table at him to remember that it was not so,—to see that all was different, really. She was noticing how Hugh’s vigorous, close-cropped hair, which had been black in Bermuda, was now hoar-frosted at temples and ears. It startled her and made her shy again. This premature grayness, taken together with an austere tightening of the corners of his lips, and two deep lines rising from them, frightened Ariel a little. She felt breathless, almost awe-struck. So much must have happened to a person to change him like that! Where she had counted on finding her father’s friend, to-day she had not found him. Everything had been, from the minute of their meeting on the pier, just between this man and herself alone, as it had used to be between him and her father. Was her father, she wondered, hovering on the edge of her present contact with Hugh as she had hovered on the edge of theirs five years ago? This was too poignant an idea, and she shut it out. Hugh was smiling at her across the bouquet of carnations which decorated the center of their table. He was exclaiming: “Imagine Mr. Schimpler suggesting a new hat for you from his brother’s shop, with a hat like that to flaunt in his face! It’s a real hat, Ariel, but I suppose you know it. And the feather! There are no words for the feather! It has an insistent personality all its own.” Ariel lifted her fingers searchingly, up to find the feather. She started to say, “Father found—” and got no farther than opened lips. But she tried her best to smile. He must be the one first to name her father. The next piece of toast that she swallowed, forcing herself, tasted salt.