All the photographs upon the mantel-shelf were Ethel's. There was her father in his cassock--staring straight out of the frame like a good and patient mule. . . . Her sisters and brothers also, of all ages and sizes, and all clothed with an odd suggestion of masquerading, of attempting the right thing. Not but what they were all perfect to poor Ethel, whose life was far too busy and limited to understand the tragedy of clothes. Rita's photographs were on the piano. There were several of her school-friends--lucky Rita had been to a smart school!--and the enigmatic face of Muriel Amberley with its youthful Mona Lisa smile looked out from an oval frame of red leather stamped with an occasional fleur-de-lys in gold. There was a portrait of Mr. Podley, cut from the _Graphic_ and framed cheaply, and there were two new photographs. One of them was that of a curly-headed, good-looking young man with rather thick lips and a painful consciousness that he was being photographed investing the whole picture with suspense. Ethel had heard Rita refer to the original of this portrait once or twice as "Dicker" or "Curly." But, then, there was another photograph. A large one this time, done in cloudy browns, nearly a foot square and with the name of a very famous artist of the camera stamped into the card. This was a new arrival, also, of the past few weeks, and it was held in a massive frame of thick plain silver. The frame, with the portrait in it, had arrived at the flat some fortnight ago in an elaborate wooden box. Ethel had recognised the portrait at once. It was of Mr. Gilbert Lothian, the great poet. Rita had met him at a dinner-party, and, if she didn't exaggerate, the great man had almost shown a disposition to be friendly. It was nice of him to send Rita his photograph, but the frame was rather too much. All that massive silver!--"it must have cost thirty shillings at least," she had thought in her innocence. When the gas was turned up, for some reason or other her eye had fallen at once upon the photograph upon the top of the piano. She had read some of Lothian's poems, but she had found nothing whatever in them that had pleased her. Even when her father had written to her and recommended them for her to read the poems meant less than nothing, and the face--no! she didn't like the face. "I hardly think that it's quite a _good_ face," she said to herself, not recognising that--the question of morality quite apart--her hostility rose from the fact that it was a face utterly outside her limited experience, a face that was eloquent of a life, of things, of thoughts that she could never even begin to understand. In the middle of the room the small round table was spread with a fair white cloth and set for a meal. There was a green bowl of bananas, a loaf of brown bread, some sardines in a glass dish. But a place was laid for one person only. Rita was in their mutual bedroom dressing. Rita was going to dine out.