‘Sit down. You needn’t go yet,’--and continued his quiet music. To free his arms she gently took the child from him and set him on her own lap, where he sat motionless and as if unconscious of the change. Gradually as she watched the crooked fingers sliding along the keys from chord to chord, and saw around her the familiar room, the past stole over her. He was the boy Julian and she the half-dreaming privileged listener; and as if there had been no gap in their knowledge of each other they sat side by side in unselfconscious intimacy. What had there been to fear? She saw now that she would always be able to pick him up just where she had left him, and find him unchanged to her; she could say anything to him without danger of mockery or rebuff. But he had always been the easiest: the sense of blood-relationship was tempered in him by his critical intelligence; and he was always prepared at least to sharpen his wits against the stranger, if not to befriend him. He paused and she said: ‘Nothing has changed here. I remember every single thing in the room and it’s all the same,--even to the inkstains on those boards. It’s like a dream to be back here talking to you--one of those dreams of remembered places where everything is so familiar it seems ominous. I’ve often had a dream like this----’ She stopped, wishing her last words unsaid; but he took her remark to be general and nodded, and leaned forward to look at Peter, lying wan and sleepy in her lap. He was very tired; but not fretful: only silent and languid. Julian touched his cheek. ‘And is Peter part of the dream too?’ he asked softly. ‘Yes. Isn’t he?’ He was the passive, waiting core of the ominousness, the unexpected thing you shrank from yet knew you had to come back to find. In the dream, it was quite natural to sit there with Julian, holding Charlie’s child. ‘Isn’t it strange,’ he said musingly, ‘that this is the only proof--the _only_ proof that Charlie ever lived? A child! Not another whisper from him.... I haven’t even a letter. I suppose _she_ has.’ An utter misery showed for a moment in his face, and he paused before adding: ‘And no portrait. Do you remember him?’ ‘Of course.’ Her throat ached with tears. ‘He was the most beautiful person----’ ‘Yes he was. A _spring_ of beauty. He didn’t care about that, you know, in spite of what people said. His physical brilliance somehow obscured his character, I think, made it difficult to judge. But he had a very simple heart.’ Was it true? Who had ever known Charlie’s heart? Was not Julian speaking as it were in epitaphs, as if his brother had become unreal to him,--a symbol for grief,--the individual ghost forgotten? Perhaps Mariella alone of all people had known his heart--strange thought!--and still had him quick within her; but she would never tell.