It was a sunny day in June when Janet arrived in London, for the first time since her ill-fated visit there a year ago. She looked up at Lowndes Mansions, as her four-wheeler plodded past them, towards Anne's house in Park Lane. Even now, a year after the great fire, scaffoldings were still pricking up against the central tower of the larger block of building. The damage caused by the fire was not even yet quite repaired. Perhaps some of it would never be repaired. Mrs Trefusis was sitting with Anne on this particular afternoon, confiding to her some discomfortable characteristics of her new daughter-in-law, the wife whom she had herself chosen for her son. "I am an old woman," said Mrs Trefusis, "and of course I don't march with the times, the world is for the young, I know that very well; but I must own, Anne, I had imagined that affection still counted for something in marriage." "I wonder what makes you think that." "Well, not the marriages I see around me, my dear, that is just what I say, though what has made you so cynical all at once, I don't know. But I ask you--look at Gertrude. She does not know what the word 'love' means." "I'm not so sure of that." "I am. She has been married to George three months, and it might be thirty years by the way they behave. And she seemed such a particularly nice girl, and exceedingly sensible, and well brought up. I should have thought she would at any rate _try_ to make my boy happy, after all the sorrow he has gone through. But they don't seem to have any real link to each other. It isn't that they don't get on. They do in a way. She is sharp enough for that. She does her duty by him. She is nice to him, but all her interests, and she has interests, seem to lie apart from anything to do with him." "Does he mind?" "I never really know what George minds or doesn't mind," said Mrs Trefusis. "It has been the heaviest cross of the many crosses I have had to bear in life, that he never confides in me. George has always been extremely reticent. Thoughtful natures often are. He will sit for hours without saying a word, looking----" "_Glum_ is the word she wants," said Anne to herself, as Mrs Trefusis hesitated. "Reserved," said Mrs Trefusis. "He does not seem to care to be with Gertrude. And yet you know Gertrude is very taking, and there is no doubt she is good-looking. And she sings charmingly. Unfortunately George does not care for music." "She is really musical." "They make a very handsome couple," said Mrs Trefusis plaintively. "When I saw them come down the aisle together I felt happier about him than I had done for years. It seemed as if I had been rewarded at last. And I never saw a bride smile and look as bright as she did. But somehow it all seems to have fallen flat. She didn't even care to see the photographs of George when he was a child, when I got them out the other day. She said she would like to see them, and then forgot to look at them." Anne was silent.