“Of course they ought to have been boys.” Francis Gordon’s voice interrupted her reverie. He seemed—as often when they were quite alone,—to have dropped the mask of superciliousness. She looked at him; wondered how much he realized. A disturbing person, this new cousin of hers. Almost uncanny at times, this way in which his mind seemed to penetrate her thoughts. . . . And again that night, at table in the long low dining-room, she speculated about this man. He sat, facing the sunset, immaculate as ever but unusually silent. Every now and then, it seemed to her as though his eyes saw—beyond the rose glow of the horizon—into vision-land. “He’s thinking about that girl,” she reasoned, “the girl whose photograph we saw at the flat.” And then, remembering the eyes of a man she had once seen at a revivalist meeting, she began to doubt her theory of a love-affair. Sunset darkled to twilight, twilight to blackness, as they finished dinner. Patricia, pleading tiredness, went upstairs early; heard, as she undressed in the cool fragrance of the river-night, the sound of canvas-chairs, dragging first across the gravel, then over grass; saw the points of two cigars burning redly under the willow-trees. “Beckmann, _Coronas_,” announced Peter. “Good, aren’t they?” “Very,” admitted Francis. For nearly ten minutes, neither spoke. It was a night for confidences. Silent save for the river-chuckle; star-dusted; _peaceful_. But the two Englishmen smoked on; reticent, each busy with his own dreaming: the one seeing a great business, world-wide, endless in opportunity: the other, vignetted in silver radiance against the sable background of his thought, the features of a girl—of a girl five thousand miles removed from England—a girl for whose sake and without hope of reward he had vowed himself to the dissatisfying god of Work. “Why don’t you get married again?” asked Peter suddenly. “Only because I can’t afford it,” lied Francis Gordon. § 6 Violet Rawlings, sprightly as ever, even more fluffily dressed than usual; and her husband Hubert, determined that ninety-six hours of personal suggestion should at last secure him some part of the Nirvana advertising account, arrived in time for lunch next day. The foxy-faced publicity agent lost no time in opening his campaign. “We went to the Palace last night,” he began, almost before they had sat down to their meal. “On our way home I noticed that your new sign in Piccadilly wasn’t burning properly.” “Really,” said Peter stiffly. “Lobster mayonnaise, or some of these cold eggs?” asked Patricia, hoping to turn their conversation. But her brother-in-law took no notice. “I’m somewhat of an expert on signs,” he continued. “And, frankly, I don’t think they have much selling value on a high-grade article like yours. _I_ pin my faith to full pages in the six-penny weeklies. And of course, _Punch_. Although _Punch_ is a humorous paper. . . .”