But Kathleen Severn had never been demonstrative. She was slow to care for people. Besides, the responsibility of bringing up the Seagrave twins had been sufficient to subdue anybody's spirits. She was only nineteen and a widow of a month when her distant relative, Magnelius Grandcourt, found her the position as personal guardian of the twins, then aged nine. Now they were twenty-one and she thirty-one; twelve years of service, twelve years of steady fidelity, which long ago had become a changeless and passionate devotion, made up of all she might have given to the dead, and of the unborn happiness she had never known. What other sort of love, if there was any, lay within her undeveloped, nobody knew because nobody had ever aroused it. Sunshine transformed into great golden transparencies the lowered shades in the living room where Geraldine stood, pensive, distraite, idly twirling her crop by the loop. Presently it flew off her gloved forefinger and fell clattering across the carpetless floor. She bathed and dressed leisurely; later, when luncheon was brought to her, she dropped into a low, wide chair and, ignoring everything except the strawberries, turned her face to the breeze which was softly rattling the southern curtains. Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind. Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; but never could completely. "For example: if I want to buy Roya-Neh," she mused, biting into an enormous strawberry, "I can do it.... All I have to do is to say that I'll buy it.... And I can live there if I choose--as long as I choose.... It's a very agreeable sensation.... I can have anything I fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan.... It's rather odd that I don't want anything." She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating. "Suppose," she murmured with perverse humour, "that I wished to build a bungalow in Timbuctoo ... or stand on my head, now, this very moment! Nobody on earth could stop me.... I believe I _will_ stand on my head for a change." The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious. She sprang to her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed toward heaven. Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on both feet breathing fast. "It's disgraceful!" she murmured; "I am certainly out of condition. Late hours are my undoing. Also cigarettes. I wish I didn't like to smoke." She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.