He stopped. And Ariel kept still. After a while he went on more calmly, “So, my dear, we’ll just wait and see what comes of the exhibition. If nothing comes of it, and there is that possibility, I’m afraid, then we will put our heads together, yours and Grandam’s and mine, and find some way to make you independent, for that is, of course, what you would want. But the coat will remain my gift to you. Why, Ariel, I have had such fun just thinking about that coat, and you in it! Even if you would _rather have had violets_.” “But it cost several hundreds of dollars. It must have. And Anne’s wearing quite a shabby squirrel-fur. Two years old. And she did love mine so, the minute she saw it. She kept on admiring it every day until I had to tell her you had given it to me! She was terribly surprised. Don’t you see how it was really unkind of you—to her?” He had not thought of the coat in terms of money until now. In dressing Ariel up in it he had returned to a forgotten freedom,—to a state where values were somehow different from his present values. But when had they shifted? And was the shift a poor or a good thing? Ariel might be right, and he might have taken a flight into pure selfishness, not into the free air he had imagined, in spending hundreds of dollars on a beautiful garment for his friend’s daughter without due consideration. But he said, “Well, whatever you think and say, and whatever is true or not true, about that pretty coat and ‘Noon’—you’ll keep them both, now that I’ve given them to you, and if you ever mention money again to me, I’ll think you’re not nice enough to be your father’s daughter.” He got up and went to the windows. The curtains had blown from their ties and he fastened them back. “I’m going down to the dance now,” he said. But he came back and stood for a minute looking at her. With the curtains back he could see her plainer. He said, more gently, “We’re not going to quarrel, are we? Grandam promised me you’d be magnanimous.” Joan was sitting in the lower hall near the front door, wrapped in her opera cape, while Prescott Enderly knelt at her feet, buckling on her opera boots. “You’re not going yet. I thought you’d promised me a dance,” Hugh protested, running down the last few stairs. “And I had. But you didn’t come for it. It’s not much fun being the only old woman at a dance. So I’m retreating in good order.” Enderly chuckled. “Old woman! She’s going in the interests of peace, let me tell you. Have you been able to keep the same partner for half a minute, to-night, Mrs. Nevin? This cutting-in business is an abomination.” “You see, Joan, I had to dress before I could appear. Then I ran up to speak to Grandam. She was expecting me home tonight, and she’d be asleep later, when the party was over. I may take these off, mayn’t I!” Hugh was down beside Enderly, his fingers on a buckle.