“It’s rather sweet the way Ariel defended you just now,” Joan commented absently. “Like a little guinea hen over its chick. And her startling aphorisms! _Love is more important than art_—and—_No one goes after beauty for himself_. Now, I ask you!” But suddenly Joan dropped that note and began talking seriously about Prescott Enderly. She smoothed out the fingers of her gloves as she went on, looking from Hugh to them, from them to Hugh. And as the gloves got smoothed, so her face. Under Hugh’s eyes it bloomed again, gradually, with its wonted complacency. It amused her, she told him, when very young men fell in love with her these days. Men older than herself—sometimes even very much older—she had come to consider more worthy game. When they were interesting at all they had had time, you see, to become just that much more interesting. Michael, for instance! He was over sixty. He looked much younger, of course. But “Who’s Who” said sixty-two. It was Prescott Enderly, however, she wanted to discuss with Hugh. The boy had become, almost over night, something of a problem. She laughed. “After all, middle-aged people one needn’t worry about, no matter how desperately infatuated they appear to themselves. One notices they don’t kill themselves for love. It’s only the very young who have the vitality to be tragic. Don’t you agree, Hugh? If I weren’t so really fond of your young novelist friend, I’d be diverted. He’s very dramatic.” “This is quite new to me,” Hugh told her, as uncomfortably as she could wish. “I thought Enderly was Anne’s beau. Didn’t know you ever saw him, in fact, until that night here.—It was Ariel’s first night with us, remember?” Ariel’s first night! Joan came near to starting, as much at the voice as at the words themselves. It had been _Joan’s_ first night, if you like, back from her winter away, but here was Hugh identifying it by Ariel’s coming to Wild Acres! And in that rich, low, reminiscent voice! “Yes, that was the night I met Enderly,” she agreed. “But I’ve seen him since, you know. Quite a lot. Didn’t I tell you that I got Mrs. Allison to invite him to her house party in Philadelphia? He was there, very much so, from Friday to Monday. How he gets away with it at Yale I can’t say. And he’s at Holly now. He’s reading me all he’s got done of the new novel to-night. Pris Larkin, by the way, is week-ending too, and your particular friend, Brenda Loring. So come over for supper, if you like. Brenda will bless me if you do—” She glanced up at the clock. “They’ll be expecting us back for tea soon now! Whatever’s keeping Michael up there all this time? It’s almost half an hour I’ve been boring you with my conquests. What _is_ keeping Michael?” “The picture, I should suppose. And getting acquainted with Grandam. Of course, he’s never met any one like her before. You mustn’t mind her not sending down for us. Schwankovsky in himself must be as taxing as a dozen people.”