‘I’d always feel--’ she struggled, ‘--compensated if I could strum as you do. Ever since I was little I’ve envied you to distraction.’ He cheered up a little and smiled, looking interested in the old way. ‘Play what you were playing last night.’ ‘How do you know what I was playing last night?’ ‘I was on the river and I heard you.’ ‘Did you?’ He was flattered. It touched his imagination to think of himself playing out into the night to invisible listeners. ‘All alone, were you?’ He looked her over with alert interest. ‘Oh yes. I said to myself: that must be Mr. Fyfe playing.’ He laughed. ‘You know, you were monstrous.’ ‘Not at all. It was you. You defied me to pretend I’d ever known you.’ ‘Nonsense. I was looking forward to you. Last time was--When? Centuries ago.’ ‘Yes. That skating time.’ ‘Lord, yes. Another world.’ Abruptly he stopped his soft playing; and Charlie came pressing upon them, making himself remembered above all else on that day. ‘Why stuff indoors?’ said Mariella. ‘Come out, Judith.’ She followed Mariella almost light-heartedly. After all, she was the sort of girl who could talk to people, even amuse them. She had proved it with Julian; and success with the others might reasonably be expected to follow. * * * * * A child was playing on a rug under the cedar tree, and his nurse sat sewing beside him. Judith recognized her as a figure out of the old days, a dragon called Pinkie, Mariella’s nurse who had become her maid. Wrinkled, stern, with the fresh cheeks and clear innocent expression of an old nurse, she sat guarding Mariella’s son. ‘May I please take him, Pinkie?’ said Mariella. ‘Pinkie won’t let me touch him as a rule.’ ‘You’re so careless,’ she said severely; then recognised Judith and beamed. Mariella lifted the child easily and carried him under one arm to where the group of young men had formed by the river’s edge. Judith watched him with a painful interest and wonder. Here in front of her was Charlie’s child: she must believe it. He was a tall child of slight build and oddly mature looks for his two years. He had frail looking temples and a neck far too slender, it seemed, to support the large head covered with a shock of fine straight brown hair. He had Mariella’s dark lashes framing brilliant deep-set eyes, and nothing else of his parents save his pallor and a certain fine-boned distinction which no Fyfe could lack.