Very quietly I rose, not to disturb her, and crossing to the interphone requested Miss Goucher's presence. My thoughts raced crazily on. In advance of Miss Goucher's coming I had dramatized my interview with her in seven different and unsatisfactory ways. When she at last entered, my temple pulses were beating and my tongue was stiff and dry. Susan, except for her shaken shoulders, had not stirred. "Miss Goucher," I managed to begin, "shut the door, please.... You see this poor child----?" Miss Goucher saw. Over her harsh, positive features fell a sort of transforming veil. It seemed to me suddenly--if for that moment only--that Miss Goucher was very beautiful. "If you wouldn't mind," she suggested, "leaving her with me?" Well, I had not in advance dramatized our meeting in this way. In all the seven scenes that had flashed through me, I had stood, an unquestioned star, at the center of the stage. I had not foreseen an exit. But I most humbly and gratefully accepted one now. Precisely what took place, what words were said there, in my study, following my humble exit, I have never learned, either from Miss Goucher or from Susan. I know only that from that hour forth the bond between them became what sentimentalists fondly suppose the relationship between mother and daughter must always be--what, alas, it so rarely, but then so beautifully, is. I date from that hour Miss Goucher's abandonment of her predilection for the lethal chamber; at least, she never spoke of it again. And Sonia stayed with us. Her boy was born in my house, and there for three happy years was nourished and shamelessly spoiled; at the end of which time Sonia found a husband in the person of young Jack Palumbo, unquestionably the pick of all our Hillhouse Avenue chauffeurs. Their marriage caused a brief scandal in the neighborhood, but was soon accepted as an authentic and successful fact. Chance and change are not always villains, you observe; the temperamental Sonia has grown stout and placid, and has increased the world's legitimate population by three. Nevertheless, it is the consensus of opinion that little Ivan, her first-born, is the golden arrow in her quiver--an opinion in which Jack Palumbo delightedly, if rather surprisingly, concurs. And so much for Sonia.... Let the curtain quietly descend. When it rises again, six years will have passed; good years--and therefore unrecorded. Your scribe, Susan, is now nearing forty; and you---- Great heavens, is it possible! Can you be "going on"--twenty? Yes, dear---- You are. THE THIRD CHAPTER I