As if in answer to her reassurance that no bogy-man was around the next turn of the stairs, there was a crack, a thud, and outcries from the studio. Past us, as we shrank back against the dreadful beasts on the wall, they dragged a youth with a bloody head. “Heugh! Got him!” And Pentreath returned to his seat on the piano bench where he played the interrupted accompaniment to the song of a large woman with a large voice. The woman’s voice easily soared above the febrile scale of comments on the recent violence. She sang a thing that sounded angelic. The damaged youth, supported on either side by youths who winced when his blood spattered them, was being borne to the bathroom for repairs. He opened his eyes and said he did not see what had made Dan so mad at him. He called out: “Jonathan! Oh, Jonathan! Do please come and hold my hand while they wash my head?” The boy Barney shuddered. “My goodness! How can you have the nerve to ask such a thing with a face all nasty and gory like that?” “Jonathan?” the injured youth implored. “Do please come with me while they wash my head? Please, Jonathan?” “No, I won’t!” said the gorgeous youth with the profile. “I’m glad of it!” Through the now uneasy movement of his guests from room to room, Pentreath played and listened to the song; his face was fine and rapt. Eva’s spasmodic clutch was on my arm. “Pentreath isn’t human, is he? But he’s great! Why should any of us mind what he does, or says? That is what it is to be truly great.” Many drank at the sideboard. Addis Wickersham pushed through the throng to ask Eva if it were true that Nicholas had eloped with Gertrude Cuyler. “And here am I, on my way to console my own wife, which you will admit is a novelty.” He added that it had been reported to him that his wife was in possession of Pentreath’s mammoth bedstead, from the depths of which she declared her intention of ending it all. “A side show to the greater show of the party,” commented Wickersham. “You ladies are always upset, in this house; because Daniel steals the spotlight.” His sonorous voice flowed to the bedstead in the adjoining room. But something was missing from this splendid organ; who could be the centre of things at Pentreath’s but Pentreath himself? It occurred to us, belatedly, that we missed Molly Underhill from amongst these excitedly moving women. And someone said: “She’s off somewhere trying to get herself ruined.” I found myself near Nicholas; and both of us had lost Eva. He said: “Do try to find out what’s on Eva’s mind?” I endeavoured to reply with comfortable assurance: “Oh, it’s merely the times.”