He would get past the library and drawing-room doors if he could, without being seen, run up to Grandam for as long a visit as she wanted, and then, leaving a note on his mother’s pillow to let her know that he had returned, get to bed after snatching a bite in the pantry. But this simple plan evaporated when, in the act of sliding past the drawing-room door, his eyes calamitously met Joan Nevin’s. She was dancing with Prescott Enderly on the edge of the wild young mob in there—Joan! So it wasn’t a children’s party, after all. But of course it couldn’t be, quite, with Prescott Enderly the guest of honor. Hugh went up the stairs two at a time. Joan’s eyes had given him an invitation, or rather a command. He smiled to himself as he rushed into evening togs. Usually Joan was more subtle in what she allowed to show in her face. Was the famous Enderly boring her? Didn’t he quite come up to his own Stephen as an attraction? It was plainly rescue, anyway, Joan needed; otherwise she would never have shown such naïve joy at the sight of himself. He jerked his tie into trim little wings, bent and gave himself one keen glance of survey in the mirror of his too low bureau, and was out in the upper hall. But he did not run down to the party and Joan immediately. He had never come home from a journey in his life, when his grandmother was at Wild Acres, without “dropping up” to say a hail to her. But he congratulated himself for his self-discipline to-night as he ran up a flight of stairs instead of running down a flight. Grandam closed a book as if that were the end of that, when he entered. “Hello, Hugh! You’re welcome. For I’ve as much to tell you this time as you can possibly have to tell me. And I’m going to have first turn. No, not the edge of my bed, _please_, Hugh! How many times have I got to tell you I simply won’t have it? It spoils the mattress. Ariel’s the only one I’ll allow. She can’t weigh enough to really hurt—” “Ariel!” “Yes, Ariel. Who else? Why did you keep her hidden, Hugh? From me, I mean. It’s Ariel I want to talk about, as I haven’t wanted to talk,—for years!” As Grandam repeated the name, it came to Hugh that Ariel, while hardly in his mind concretely at all during the week of his absence, had never actually been very far away from it. She had, to his mental preoccupations, something of the relation she had to the central theme of her father’s paintings. She did not get mixed up with the works, but she was there all the same, hovering on the edges,—definite and vital. A girl with March sunshine squinting her green eyes into Chinesy slits under the brim of a green hat. A girl with a friendly, pointed-cornered mouth. A girl in a white coat, looking like a fairy-tale princess..., too.