She heard: “Is there anything wrong?” and sent him a reassuring laugh. “Nothing--except _me_. I don’t yet know how to fit in. There are so many things I ought to be told. Remember, I’m so unprepared--” She fancied she felt a tremor of disapproval along the wire. Ought she not to have gone even as far as that on the telephone? “Anne’s out,” she added hastily. “I was tired, and she told me to rest. But I can’t. How can I? Can’t you come?” He returned, without the least acceleration of the syllables: “I never leave the office until--” “Five. I know. But just today--” There was a pause. “Yes; I’ll come, of course. But you know there’s nothing in the world to bother about,” he added patiently. (“He’s saying to himself,” she thought, “‘that’s the sort of fuss that used to drive poor Clephane out of his wits’.”) But when he came he did not strike her as having probably said anything of the sort. There was no trace of “the office”, or of any other preoccupation, in the friendly voice in which he asked her if she wouldn’t please stay lying down, and let him do the talking. “Yes, I want you to. I want you to tell me everything. And first of all--” She paused to gather up her courage. “What does Anne know?” she flung at him. Her visitor had seated himself in the armchair facing her. The late afternoon light fell on his thick ruddy face, in which the small eyes, between white lids, looked startlingly blue. At her question the blood rose from his cheeks to his forehead, and invaded the thin pepper-and-salt hair carefully brushed over his solidly moulded head. “Don’t--don’t try to find out, I beg of you; I haven’t,” he stammered. She felt his blush reflected on her own pale cheek, and the tears rose to her eyes. How was he to help her if he took that tone? He did not give her time to answer, but went on, in a voice laboriously cheerful: “Look forward, not back: that’s the thing to do. Living with young people, isn’t it the natural attitude? And Anne is not the kind to dig and brood: thank goodness, she’s health itself, body and soul. She asks no questions; never has. Why should I have put it into her head that there were any to ask? Her grandmother didn’t. It was her policy ... as it’s been mine. If we didn’t always agree, the old lady and I, we did on _that_.” He stood up and leaned against the mantel, his gaze embracing the pyramidal bronze clock on which a heavily-draped Muse with an Etruscan necklace rested her lyre. “Anne was simply given to understand that you and her father didn’t agree; that’s all. A girl,” he went on in an embarrassed tone, “can’t grow up nowadays without seeing a good many cases of the kind about her; Lord forgive me, they’re getting to be the rule rather than the exception. Lots of things that you, at her age, might have puzzled over and thought mysterious, she probably takes for granted. At any rate she behaves as if she did.