Maradick had not spoken to Mrs. Lester since their parting on the day before. He was waiting now until her eyes should meet his; he would know then whether he were forgiven. He had spent the morning on the beach with his girls. He had come up to lunch feeling as he usually did after a few hours spent in their company, that they didn’t belong to him at all, that they were somebody else’s; they were polite to him, courteous and stiffly deferential, as they would be to any stranger about whom their mother had spoken to them. Oh! the dreariness of it! But it amused him, when he thought of it, that they, too, poor innocent creatures, should be playing their unconscious part in the whole game. They were playing it because they helped so decisively to fill in the Epsom atmosphere, or rather the way that he himself was thinking of Epsom—the particular greyness and sordidness and shabbiness of the place and the girls. He had come up to lunch, therefore, washing his hands of the family. He had other things to think of. The immediate affair, of course, was Tony, but he had had as yet no talk with the boy. There wasn’t very much to say. It had been precisely as he, Maradick, had expected. Morelli had refused to hear of it and Tony had probably imagined the rest. In the calm light of day things that had looked fantastic and ominous in the dark were clear and straightforward. After all, Tony was very young and over-confident. Maradick must see the man himself. And so that matter, too, was put aside. “Yes,” Lester was saying, “we are obviously pushing back to Greek simplicity, and, if it isn’t too bold a thing to say, Greek morals. The more complicated and material modern life becomes the more surely will all thinking men and lovers of beauty return to that marvellous simplicity. And then the rest will have to follow, you know, one day.” “Oh yes,” said Maradick absently. His eyes were fixed on the opposite wall, but, out of the corners of them, he was watching for the moment when Mrs. Lester should look up. Now he could regard yesterday afternoon with perfect equanimity; it was only an inevitable move in the situation. He wondered at himself now for having been so agitated about it; all that mattered was how she took it. The dogged, almost stupid mood had returned. His eyes were heavy, his great shoulders drooped a little as he bent to listen to Lester. There was no kindness nor charity in his face as he looked across the floor. He was waiting; in a moment she would look up. Then he would know; afterwards he would see Morelli. “And so, you see,” said Lester, “Plato still has the last word in the matter.” “Yes,” said Maradick. Mrs. Lawrence was being entirely tiresome at the tea-table. The strain of the situation was telling upon her. She had said several things to Sir Richard and he had made no answer at all.