“Of course.” Molly considered it for a moment, and added, “I believe I could be friends with anyone, except a heathen.” “A what?” “A heathen. An unbeliever, you know.” “Oh, I see. I thought you meant a black. Well, it partly depends on what they don’t believe, of course. I think, personally, one should try to believe as many things as one can, it’s more interesting; but I don’t feel any barrier between me and those who believe much less. Nor would you, if you got to know them and like them. One doesn’t like people for what they believe, or dislike them for what they don’t believe. It simply doesn’t come in at all.” All the same, Molly did not think she could be real friends with a heathen. The fact that Eddy did, very slightly worried her; she preferred to agree with Eddy. But she was always staunch to her own principles, and didn’t attempt to do so in this matter. “I want you to meet some friends of mine who I hope are coming to stay after Christmas,” went on Eddy, who knew he could rely on a much more sympathetic welcome for his friends from Molly than from Daphne. “I’m sure you’ll like them immensely. One’s Arnold Denison, whom I expect you’ve heard of.” (Molly had, from Daphne.) “The others are girls--Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine.” He talked a little about Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine, as he had talked to Daphne, but more fully, because Molly was a more gratifying listener. “They sound awfully nice. So original and clever,” was her comment. “It must be perfectly ripping to be able to do anything really well. I wish I could.” “So do I,” said Eddy. “I love the people who can. They’re so---- well, alive, somehow. Even more than most people, I mean; if possible,” he added, conscious of Molly’s intense aliveness, and Daphne’s, and his own, and Diddums’. But the geniuses, he knew, had a sort of white-hot flame of living beyond even that.... “We’d better wait here for the others,” said Molly, stopping at the field gate, “and I’ll hand over Diddums to Daffy. He’ll feel it’s all right if I put him in her arms and tell him to stay there.” They waited, sitting on the stile. The silver light flooded the brown fields, turning them grey and pale. It silvered Diddums’ absurd brown body as he snuggled in Molly’s arms, and Molly’s curly, escaping waves of hair and small sweet face, a little paled by its radiance. To Eddy the grey fields and woods and Molly and Diddums beneath the moon made a delightful home-like picture, of which he himself was very much part. Eddy certainly had a convenient knack of fitting into any picture without a jar, whether it was a Sunday School class at St. Gregory’s, a Sunday Games Club in Chelsea, a canons’ tea at the Deanery, the stables and kennels at the Hall, or a walk with a puppy over country fields. He belonged to all of them, and they to him, so that no one ever said “What is _he_ doing in that _galère_?” as is said from time to time of most of us.