‘Why not this Sunday?’ he asked. ‘I shall be free the whole day.’ ‘Yes, but I won’t,’ she said, laughing, for he amused her. ‘At least, I feel sure there is something----’ She knitted her brows, trying to remember. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘Stephen. I’ve promised to go out with him.’ ‘Stephen?’ His heart stood still. George was settled, completely, felicitously, and now here was Stephen. Then, just as the door was going to shut on her, leaving him out there alone, a warm and comforting light flooded his understanding: Stephen was her son; her little son, her only little son. Hateful as it was to reflect upon--really marriage was most horrible--George had perpetuated himself, and this delicate small thing, this exquisite soft little creature, had been the vehicle for his idiotic wish to carry on his silly name. ‘I suppose,’ he said, detaining her, his hat still in his hand, the rain falling on his bare head, the porter holding the door open and looking on, ‘you’re taking him to the Zoo?’ He could think of no place so likely as the Zoo on Sunday for Stephen, and to the Zoo he also would go, and have a look at those jolly little monkeys again. ‘The Zoo?’ she repeated, puzzled. Then she began to laugh. ‘I wonder,’ she said, her face brimming over with laughter, ‘why you think Stephen wants to be taken to the Zoo. Poor darling’--another poor darling, and this time a live one--‘why, he’s as old as I am.’ As old as she was. Stephen. She waved her hand. ‘Come some other Sunday,’ she called out as the door shut. He stood for a moment staring at it. Then he turned away slowly, putting his hat on as he went down the steps, and he was walking away through the rain lost in the most painful thought, mechanically heading for home, when the taxi-driver, realising with amazed indignation what his fare was doing, jerked him back to his obligations by vigorously and rudely shouting ‘Hi!’ II Ten days to wait till the Sunday after. It was only Friday night. He would see her in between, of course, at <i>The Immortal Hour</i>, and might perhaps manage to take her home again, but would he be able in these snippets of time, these snatches, these beginnings interrupted by the curtain going up or the lights going down, to find out from her who and what was Stephen? It was intolerable to have at last come across her and instantly to find oneself up against Stephen. Dismal were his conjectures as he was rattled home by the taxi so lately made sweet by her presence. Stephen couldn’t be her brother, for nobody made appointments ahead and carried them out so conscientiously with brothers; and he couldn’t be her uncle or her nephew, the only two remaining satisfactory relationships, because she had said he was as old as she was. Who, then, and what was Stephen?