“Why, Mother! You’re crying! Why? I hadn’t an idea you were so bothered! Poor darling!—I’ve an idea. Why don’t _you_ go to Europe right now, this spring? We can manage it beautifully—” “And leave you unchaperoned here with this young person, I suppose!” “That’s ridiculous! Unchaperoned! But if you must be so considerate, darling, there’s Grandam—” “Yes? But _is_ there? I sometimes wonder! Grandam might as well be living in the highest snow of the Andes for all the contact she has with _us_ these days! Her röle as chaperone wouldn’t have much illusion for the servants, or even for the world at large, I’m afraid, Hugh dear. But in any case I don’t want to be driven away, if you please, from my home and my children and my friends by your Ariel Clare!” Hugh was utterly taken aback. He had not known that his mother harbored any resentment whatever toward Ariel. And why in heaven’s name should she! But he said, after a moment of quick thought, “Look here, Mother! Ariel can go in to New York with me mornings. There’ll be plenty for her to do all day, seeing the sights. That’ll get her off your hands. I only haven’t suggested it before because she’ll need money, batting around by herself, and the poor girl’s awfully touchy about money right now. If she weren’t so proud—” His mother’s strange, suddenly hysterical laugh halted him. “So proud!” she gibed. “Why don’t you suggest that she pawn the fur coat you gave her, Hugh! She wouldn’t need any further resources for a long time. She _could_ go to Europe then, or anywhere else she wanted to—comfortably. But certainly you’re not to dry-nurse her days in New York. That’s absurd. Something will come along to solve the problems, I know. It’ll have to. Thursday, though, I _will_ let you take your turn, since you suggest it. It’s my day for the Shakespeare Club, and Ariel certainly wouldn’t fit. So your New York plan will be useful for that one day. You are a self-sacrificing old dear!” Hugh, on leaving his mother, walked quietly out to the guest-room wing and stood for a few seconds before Ariel’s shut door. All was still. So very still that he actually _sensed_ a girl sleeping. He wanted to go in, to look at her asleep. Her room, when she was in it, was, he knew, like a still little corner in the sky, cold, star-filled.... She was precious to him, this daughter of his friend, every hour more so, as he came to know her better. Was this tenderness that welled in his heart merely the automatic tenderness which most people do harbor for what is helpless and dependent on them, and not really the unique thing he felt it? He scarcely knew.