I turned in order to inspect Eva as a stranger might. She would sail away, over the surface of a lovely reflecting pool, if one made a sudden ardent movement. Across the lovely reflecting pool of her absorption, she went away from Nicholas to lean on the piano and meditate. Her eyes were cast down, and her pensive pose, her lashes resting so quietly on her cheeks, might have hidden any line of reaction. With his incredible sinuosity, Spencer Mapes reached her side. I heard him say, as if she were protesting something that had offended her: “Hold on to yourself!” But I knew, as he knew, that she was pleased because she did not wish to be anything but the swan that sails away. I smiled at him, and for an instant his heavy-lidded eyes flashed amusement. Then once again he was bending solicitously and murmuring to her. “You see what is happening already? Your husband’s people are sapping your belief in yourself. But--forgive me? I had no right to say that. They are your people, now--so far as they will let you go with them. However, I can’t help remembering that I had much to do with making you--starting you on your career----” She said nothing. She retained her charming pose. “To see you treated as an experiment in sociology----” He seemed to hesitate. I glanced swiftly at Nicholas Van Suydam. His high-bridged nose might be indicative of arrogance; it might be the outward sign of that inner spiritual necessity which urged his mother to live on in Washington Square, to drive behind a pair of horses, and to mope over Chinatown now lying along streets named for the branches of her family. I thought that he had made up his mind to say nothing about an incident which must have affronted him. Or possibly he had not overheard. But his eyes were more brightly blue than ever, and this I took for a danger sign. On the mantle of the snow, which as we started downtown no longer fell but lay in unbroken white, he must have seen Eva’s head as Zermonte would caricature her. The picture so close to his mind’s eye that he was unable to see around it to Eva herself, he said with a forced gaiety: “We used to have storms like this when I was a boy. In those days, they used to last a long while; but this one may be slush by morning.” He expected no reply.