Grandam’s violet eyes rested on the young novelist briefly, but she did not follow her daughter-in-law’s lead and begin speaking of his work. Instead she passed him by for Anne. “I’m sorry you haven’t come up at a time when I could see you, Anne,” she said in a voice which surprised only by being so fitting—a low voice, but light, and casual as a bird’s flight is casual. “I’m glad you’ve had such a jolly vacation. It isn’t often, is it, that Smith’s and Yale’s spring vacations coincide?” Nothing that Grandam said was remarkable, or by the greatest stretch of the fascinated onlooker’s imagination could be thought important. It was all talk of the most everyday things—the weather, Glenn’s and Anne’s plans for the long summer vacation, her daughter-in-law’s plans for some serious landscape gardening at Wild Acres; and Hugh’s protracted absence. She could not have had a very vital interest in any of these things she talked about and heard talked about during this meal. Yet, when she spoke to any one or listened to any one in particular, that person had a sense of vital contact, of swift, actual sympathy. This was not because Grandam was insincere. Quite the contrary. She was, even in these casual contacts, as sincere as the flight of a bird is sincere, direct, absolutely unstudied, intuitional. As it happened that she looked or listened to Glenn, Mrs. Weyman, Anne, or Prescott, then Glenn, Mrs. Weyman, Anne or Prescott quickened, grew alive—behaved the way those Japanese toy flowers behave when dropped into water; their personalities expanded, took form and pattern. Ariel saw this, and the simile of the Japanese flowers was hers. As for herself, Ariel was aware that Grandam was aware of her even when she seemed most absorbed in the others. Several times the violet eyes had swept her, lightly but not blindly. And with dessert, when Mrs. Weyman had succeeded in an attempt she had intermittently been making to draw Enderly out, during the meal, and show Grandam how much of a person this guest of theirs really was, and he was in the middle of an anecdote which had to do with a recent party in a famous New York studio—an anecdote studded and aglitter with famous and near-famous names—Grandam suddenly turned to Ariel, and without any real impoliteness to Enderly, for after all he was sitting beside Mrs. Weyman at the other end of the table, and had her undivided, individual attention, said, “They tell me that your father was a painter. Do you care about that? Do you paint or want to?”