"And now, please tell me," said Peter, "how it comes that I haven't seen you for ten years?" "How comes it that we have not seen _you_? You have been everywhere, and so have we; really it is odd that we should never have met. Of course you know that we left the Priory only a year after you went to India?" Peter nodded. "I was dismayed to find you gone when I got back. I heard vague rumors of Florence, and when I went there one winter you had disappeared." "We must have been in Dresden. How I hated it! All the shabby second-rate culture of the world seems to gravitate to Dresden. We had to let the Priory, you know. We are so horribly poor." Katherine's smiling assertion was not carried out in her appearance, yet the statement put a bond of familiarity between them; Katherine spoke as to an old friend who had a right to know. "Then we had a year or two at Dinard--loathsome place I think it! Then Florence again, and at last Paris, and here we have been for over three years, and here we shall probably stick for who knows how long! Hilda's painting gives us a reasonable background; at least as reasonable as such exiles can hope for." "But you don't mean to say that your exile is indefinite?" Katherine nodded, with eyebrows lifted and a suggestion of shrug in the creamy expanse of shoulder. "And Hilda paints? Well?" "Hilda paints really well. She has always painted, and her work is really individual, unaffectedly individual, and that's the rare thing, you know. Over four years of atelier work didn't scotch Hilda's originality, and she has a studio of her own now, and is never happy out of it." "What kind of work does she go in for?" Peter was conscious of a vague uneasiness about Hilda. "Portraits?" "No; Hilda is not very good at likenesses. Her things are very decorative--not Japanese either--except in their air of choice and selection; well, you must see them, they really are original, and, in their own little way, quite delightful; they are, perhaps, a wee bit like baby Whistlers--not that I intimate any real resemblance--but the sense of color, the harmony; but you must see them," Katherine repeated. "And Mrs. Archinard?" Peter felt some remorse at having forgotten that rather effaced personality. "Mamma is just the same, only stronger than she used to be in England. I think the Continent suits her better. And now _you_, Mr. Odd. The idea of talking about such nobodies as we are when you have become such a personage! You have become rather cynical too, haven't you? As a child you did not make a cynical impression on me, and your 'Dialogues' did. I think you are even more cynical than Renan. Some stupid person spoke to me of a _rapport_ between your 'Dialogues' and his 'Dialogues Philosophiques.' I don't imply that, except that you are both sceptical and both smiling, only your smile is more bitter, your scepticism less frivolous." "I'm sceptical as to people, not as to principles," said Peter, smiling not bitterly.