"Now look here, isn't it bad luck to begin asking embarrassing questions straight away off? I hoped I was going to avoid this point! If you must have the truth--I _do_! America suits me!"--his smile was full of complacence--"I suit America. That's not by any means a sure thing. Many Englishmen throw up the sponge and return home. They can't adapt themselves, don't _want_ to adapt themselves. In my case I had had no business experience in England, so I began with an open mind without prejudice, and--it _went_: I like the life, I like the people. I like the climate. The climate is answerable for a lot of the extra energy which you over here call `restlessness.' You want to do just about twice as much beneath those skies!" He cast an impatient glance towards the window. "It's all so _grey_! ... I've had a headache straight on the last two days." "Tea's ready now; it will do you good. There are hot scones in that dish," Pixie said quietly. The greyness of the street seemed to have entered the room--to have entered her heart. It was _all_ grey. ... "We knew, of course, that you _must_ like it, when you stayed so long." Now there was something which was _not grey_. Stanor's face flushed a painful red; he looked at his cup, at the floor, in the fire, at anything but in Pixie's face. His voice was hard with repressed embarrassment. "Er--just so; you would, of course! There was work on hand. I waited to see it through. When a man has spent two years in the same place so many claims arise, in social life as well as in work. It is difficult for him to break away at a moment's notice. He is hardly his own master." "I'm sure it is. And when there was work you were quite right to stay on. It would have been wrong to have left it unfinished." Stanor, looked up sharply, met clear, honest eyes, which looked back into his without a trace of sarcasm. She _meant_ it! Voice and look alike were transparently genuine. At that moment she was essentially the Pixie of old, the Pixie to whom it came naturally to believe the best. The flush on Stanor's cheeks deepened as he realised the nature of the "work" which had made his excuse. His voice deepened with the first real note of intimacy. "That's like you, Pixie! You always understood. ... And now tell me about yourself. What's happened to you since I heard last? Six months ago, was it? No! barely four. Didn't you write for Christmas? Been jogging along as usual at home, playing games with the babies?" "Yes; just jogging," said Pixie. Then of a sudden her eyes flashed. "`Over here' we don't find the `best of life' in a _rush_! It comes to some of us quite satisfactorily in a jog! `I guess,' as you say, that my life as been as much `worth while' as if I'd spent it in a round of pink luncheons and green teas, as your American friends seem to do." The unexpected happened, and, instead of protesting, Stanor sighed, and looked of a sudden grave and depressed.