“I wonder what you look like, and I’m afraid to find out. I’ve always thought of you as still a little chap, and I don’t want to undeceive myself. You used to be the faery-tale I told my little girl. ’Tell me more about Teddy,’ she used to say. And then I’d invent such wonderful stories. You were our dream-person.--She wouldn’t let you know that for worlds; you mustn’t let her guess that you know. She’s like that--an odd girl: she feels far more than she’ll ever express--goes out of her way to make people misunderstand, to make them think she’s cold and careless. It’s because---- Can you guess? It’s because she’s afraid to love too much. Her mother let love have power over her and--she got hurt. Oh, well!” She shrugged her white shoulders. “No use regretting. Ah, this brings memories!” In a half-voice, like a lark beating up into the clouds, she commenced to hum to the accompaniment; then took up the words. In the dim-lit room, with the blackness of night peering in at the window and the lilies breathing out their exotic fragrance, all the wistful past came trooping back. He forgot New York, forgot his anxiety and loneliness. Pictures formed and melted under the spell of her singing. He remembered his childish elation, when she had carried him back to the tapestried bedroom, making him believe that she preferred him to Hal. He saw again the tenderness in her face as she had bent over him by the firelight, listening expectantly for Hal’s footstep in the passage. He felt again the despair of his first disillusion, when the great day had been spoilt and she had driven home with him through the lamp-smirched London night, begging him to believe that she was good--that she was good whatever happened. After all these years the memory of that childish tragedy burnt again intensely. Had love hurt her? A strange complaint to hear from Vashti! Hadn’t she rather hurt herself? Her fatal sweetness must have proved cruel to many men. His mother, Mrs. Sheerug, every one had doubted her. Even Hal doubted her now--Hal who had promised to follow her through the dark wood that few women had dared to tread. What had happened to her in the dark wood? Teddy could only guess; but because she was Desire’s mother, and still more at this moment because she was singing, he could not help but think that she was good. At last, after all these years of following, he had come up with her. Did she need his help? Was she trying to tell him? She swung round with a rippling laugh which had tears in it. “Have you forgiven me, Teddy? A sentimental question! Of all the big sins I’ve done, that’s the one that I’ve most regretted.--Ah, you’ll not say that you havel Boys don’t forget things like that.”