Old Pres was talking. Something about Spengler—no—Walter Lippmann. Glenn had been missing, had skipped whole gobs of what his brilliant friend was saying. An important contribution to civilized thinking? Walter Lippmann’s book? Oh, yes, Glenn agreed with that. Prescott, meeting his glance, caught the full force of the agreement and regained in a twinkling the complacency he had been in danger of losing since Glenn had gone obviously wool-gathering and stopped listening. For Glenn was the only one here really interested in this sort of thing. The others were merely polite, pretending agreement and interest. Prescott and Glenn understood each other, valued each other. The others didn’t count—except in quite a different way. Anne counted—rather—of course. But it was Glenn he really addressed himself to. And Glenn was saying to himself, “I’m following old Pres now—what he’s saying. I like this dessert, almond flavoring it’s got. And yet it still holds. There’s magic here—in this silence—something wonderful here.... Like when I was a kid....” The moth was directed to bring coffee into the drawing-room later, for Mrs. Nevin was coming to have it with them. A fire was blazing on the hearth there. The moth had been sent to apply the match during dinner. The drawing-room contrasted sharply with the hall, the dining room, and the library. They were dim, big apartments, lighted by richly shaded but subdued lamps. The drawing-room had creamy walls, spindly gilt furniture, and turquois blue rugs. An Italian chandelier, a cluster of glittering bulbs and crystals, outdid the fire and the lamps and made the room brighter than day. Anne and Enderly quickly appropriated the little blue and gilt sofa near the library door, sat uneasily there and looked prepared, at the flick of an eye, to escape into the romantic, shadowy library. Glenn got a book, and with the air of being a martyr to his mother’s desires, settled himself with it in a distant chair, a straight-backed, fragile piece of furniture which looked as though it had never before in its history been read on. Hugh, his mother and Ariel were together around the low table, a little back from the fire, which soon was to hold the coffee things. Mrs. Weyman, in the glaring white light cast down by the chandelier, looked more a possible mother of Hugh than she had when Ariel first saw her, but she was still very pretty. There was only one picture on the creamy walls of this room. That was a big panel framed in ebony, which reached from ceiling to floor of the wall opposite the door from the hall,—a conventionalized, brilliant shower of garden flowers.