He had put that idea deliberately behind his back, hidden it in the deepest recess of his mind, with a strange content and a germ of pride unconfessed and unacknowledged to himself. It remained a secret feeling that touched at no point his steady faith and devotion to his dead mother. But Peter's suggestion had utterly quenched his original intention of asking Mr. Aston or Caesar of his own origin, as he had intended to do at the time of his return from Belgium. The actual possibility or impossibility of the idea counted nothing so long as the faintest shadow of it lurked there in the background. If it were a fact, it was their secret, deliberately withheld; if it were not, he must be the last to give it life. The incalculable power of suggestion had done its work and the suggested lie, taking root, had grown at the pace of all ill weeds and obscured his usually clear visions of essentials. The more he questioned the possible fact the denser seemed the screen between him and Patricia, until he called himself a fool to have dreamed she was ever his to claim at all. It was in this wholly unsatisfactory mood he was called upon, on his return, to face Patricia and give his own account of the interview. Patricia was lying in wait for him at the door of her own sanctum, which he had to pass on his way to his room. He would have gladly deferred the interview, but she summoned him imperiously. "There's a good hour till dinner, Christopher, and I must know what he said. How long you've been!" He followed her in and closed the door behind him. The little white-panelled room was so perfect an expression of its owner that at all times Christopher felt a still wonder fall on him to find himself within its confines. It was singularly uncrowded and free, and the monotonous note of light colour was broken by splashes of brightness that were as an embroidery to the plain setting. Patricia turned to him with questioning eyes and no words, and the difficulty of his task made him a little curt and direct in speech, for otherwise how could he avoid voicing the tenderness that flowed to her. "I told him about it and he seemed surprised he hadn't been told before, and he hadn't really taken in what happened this afternoon at all. I expect he'll write to you." A faint ghost of a smile touched her white face. "You are not really telling me what I want to know, Christopher." "There's nothing else. He hadn't got the real focus of the thing when I left." "I understand."