So they went out and she helped him, against his will—for he loved his triumph over difficulties—down the majestic marble stairs, and they passed the happy tennis courts and the chairs of the cheery invalids looking on at the game, and on through the Japanese garden with its pond of great water-lilies and fairy bridge across, and out of the gate into the little beech wood that screened the house from the home farm. On a rough seat amid the sun-flecked greenery they sat down. He said: “I may be a sentimental ass, but you seem to be nearer to me than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.” She made a little helpless gesture. He laughed his pleasant laugh, which robbed his lips of their hardness. “You supply a long-felt want, you know.” “That sounds rather nice, but I don’t quite understand, Mr. Baltazar.” “Oh, Mr. Baltazar be blowed!” he cried. “My name’s Godfrey. For God’s sake let me hear somebody call me by it! You of all people. Why, you knew me before I was born.” He said it unthinking—a boyish epigram. Her sudden flush brought consciousness of blunder in elemental truth and taste. He sat stiff, horrified; gasped out: “Forgive me. I didn’t realize what I was saying.” She glanced covertly at his young and consternation-stricken face, and her heart went out to him who, after all, on so small a point of delicacy found himself so grievously to blame. “Perhaps, my dear boy,” she said, “it is well that you have touched on this. You and I are grown up and can speak of things frankly—and certain things that people don’t usually discuss are often of supreme importance in their own and other people’s lives. I didn’t know you before you were born, nor did your father. It’s he that counts. If he had known, he would never have left your mother to. . . . No, no! He would have found some other way. He couldn’t have left her. It’s incredible. I know it. I know all the strength and the beauty and the wonder of him.” “My God,” said the young man, “how you must have loved him!” “Without loving him, any fool could have looked through his transparent honesty. He was that kind of man.” “Tell me,” he said, “all the little silly things you can remember about him.”