He drank deeply of beer. “Well now, I tell you, that's the last time, absolutely the last time I do the civil thing to--well, to that sort, if she's my wife's grandmother.” He stared out of window, mist over his blue eyes. “They're all for marrying her now. It seems it can be done. Chap's to be screwed up. Then she'll be patronising me, you'll see. Because I was decently civil--that was as far as I was prepared to go; bare civility--and two fingers for it--'Quite well, thank you!' Oh, damn it. Waiter--more beer.” II Vicky was enchanting; for half-an-hour Sanchia was at the top of bliss. To be petted and diminutived by a butterfly--it was like that; for though the child was a year older than she, six years of marriage had made a baby of her. Her audacities of old had become artless prattle, her sallies were skips in the air. Yet to be purred over by a kitten was pure joy. “You darling!' You darling little Sancie! You beautiful, pale, Madame-de-Watte-ville kind of person! Oh, my treasure--and I thought I should never see you again!” So she cooed while she cuddled, Sanchia, for her part, saying little, but kissing much. Her lips were famished; but Vicky's must be free for moments if her words were to be intelligible. During such times she stroked or patted the prodigal, and let her browse on her cheeks. By-and-by, raptures subsiding, the pair settled down for talk, and the discrepancies which eight years had made began to show up, like rocks and boulders in a strand left bare by the ebb. Grotesque the shapes of some of them, comical others; but wrecks and dead things come to light at low water--spectral matter, squalid, rueful matter. And there are chasms set yawning, too, which you cannot bridge. Sanchia was to be lacerated. No doubt it was laughable at first, as _naivete_ is. “Cuthbert was very funny about it”--for instance. “He was awfully anxious to see you, you know--you had never met, I think?--and yet not quite liking it. He said it was a great risk; he seemed to think I ought not to be there. He takes great care of me, the darling. And there was little Dickie, you see. Sancie! he can just walk--a kind of totter from my knees to Cuthbert's--and then so proud of himself! Cuthbert said that my duty was to Dickie; but I told him that I meant to come.” Yes, it was comical. “Did Captain Sinclair think I should give him a complaint?” Sanchia was smiling, with eyes and mouth; but the smile was fixed.