“In the attic! But why?” Ariel could not take it in for a minute. But strangely, her body was quicker than her brain to react. Her heart had started an angry pounding and her fingers were curling into her palms, hard, the nails biting into the flesh. Ariel wondered at her fingers and at her heart. She had followed Grandam across the floor toward the hall door. But Grandam halted by the piano and leaned a hand on it, suddenly supporting herself. “Wait, Ariel,” she said. “I’ll try to explain it to you a little. Hugh put ‘Noon’ in the attic because he didn’t want it around where he could see it. But it isn’t the insult to the painting and to your father that it seems. I’m sure it isn’t. It is something different altogether. For the attic, in this case, isn’t the attic at all....” But Ariel was not to be betrayed into thinking that the attic was the haunted, magical home of the invisible great-great-great-great-grandmother which she had almost imagined it on looking in there this afternoon. Her nails were biting into her palms, and her mouth was dry. What did Grandam mean, saying the attic was not an attic? Grandam was looking down at the anemones. She had stopped looking at Ariel. “The attic isn’t an attic—because it is Hugh’s subconscious mind. That’s what modern psychology, anyway, calls the place where we chuck away the memories that hurt us. And no more than the attic out there is an attic, is ‘Noon’ a painting. It was a painting when Hugh bought it, and thought it so beautiful. But Hugh was in love. And when one is a lover, every æsthetic joy actually hurts until it can be passed on to the beloved. To share it would be even more relieving, of course. But in this case there was no hope of Hugh’s sharing anything very much with Mrs. Nevin. Her husband was still living and Joan had chosen him in preference to Hugh, anyway. No. Whatever he could possess of beauty he must give her outright, not even think of sharing with her.” Grandam touched the glassy petal of an anemone, so lightly that its delicate nerves did not feel a tremor. “Well, he showed ‘Noon’ to Joan without first telling her that it was to belong to her, because he wanted to tantalize her a little—and enjoy with her the moment of surprise when he thrust ‘Noon’ into her hands, to keep. But he never got that far, for Joan merely laughed at the painting, and the artist, and laughed at all the Bermuda episode. She wanted to be the source of all his joys.