He was shyly, charmingly glad to see them. And delighted, of course, he said, to see Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning. He insisted on their all staying to tea, to dinner, on their giving him, now that they had come, a day. He ordered whisky and soda and lemonade. He brought peaches and chocolates and cigarettes, and offered them diffidently, as things mortal and savouring of mortality. He went to and fro, carrying himself humbly yet with triumph, like one aware that he entertained immortal guests. He couldn't get over it, he said, their dropping in on him like this, with a divine precipitance, out of their blue. Heavens! Supposing he had been out! He stood there glowing at them, the most perfect thing in his perfect drawing-room. It was a room of old chintzes and old china, of fragile, distinguished furniture, of family portraits, of miniatures in medallions, and great bowls of roses everywhere. The whole house had a strange feminine atmosphere, a warm look as if a woman's hand had passed over it. Yet it was Nicky who was the soul of his house, a slender soul, three parts feminine. Nicky was looking at Jane as she stooped over the roses. "Do you know," he said, "that you've come home? Come and see yourself." He led the way into his library where her portrait looked down from its high place. "You bought it?" said she. "Rather. Gisborne painted it for me." "Oh, Nicky!" "It's your genius brooding over mine--I mean over me." He looked at her again. When he looked at you Nicky's perfect clothes, his long chin, his nose that seemed all bridge, his fine little black moustache, Nicky himself retreated into insignificance beneath his enormous, prominent black eyes. "I put you there," he said, "to inspire me." Nicky's eyes gazed at you with a terrible solemnity whenever he talked about his inspiration. "Do I?" She did. They had caught him in the high act of creation. He'd been at it since ten o'clock; sitting there, with the blood, he said, beating so furiously in his brain that if he'd gone on like that he'd have destroyed himself. His head was burning now. "We'll drag you, Nicky, to the top of Wendover Hill, and air you thoroughly. You reek," said Tanqueray. His idea always was that they took Nicky out of doors to air him; he had so strongly the literary taint. Nicky declared that he would have been willing to be dragged with them anywhere. Only, as it happened, he had to be at home. He was expecting Miss Bickersteth. They knew Miss Bickersteth? They knew her. Nicky, for purposes of his own, was in the habit of cultivating, assiduously, the right people; and Miss Bickersteth was eminently right. The lady, he said, might be upon them any minute. "In that case," said Tanqueray, "we'll clear out." "_You_ clear out? But you're the very people he wants to see." "He?" Hugh Brodrick. Miss Bickersteth was bringing Hugh Brodrick. They smiled. Miss Bickersteth was always bringing somebody or being brought.