And in that case why had I come to see Madge Aird? What could Madge do? What could anybody do? If the thing was true it was inescapable. He _must_ go back. Not one single stage could be avoided. Beyond these episodes which he dreaded lay others that perhaps he need not dread, and others beyond those, and others beyond those ... until he attained sixteen.... I continued to muse and Madge to play. At last Alec got contentedly up. He straightened the creases from his dinner-jacket. "Thanks, old girl," he said. "Well, I'm going to turn in, and you two can sit up and yarn about your royalties if you like. You look after him, Madge, and see he doesn't get hold of _The Times_ before I do in the morning. Night, George. You know where everything is----" And, refilling his pipe as he went, he was off. Madge drew up a small table between us, untied the ribbons of her cothurnes, rubbed the creases from her ankles, and worked her toes inside their sheath of silk. "Well?" she said; and then with a little rapturous gush, "I can't get the creature's beauty out of my head! That skin--that hair--and those wonderful books! It isn't fair. It's too many gifts for one person. He ought to be nationalised or something--turned over to the public like a park." "I want you to tell me who Mrs Bassett is," I said. She bargained. "It's a swap, mind. If I tell you about her you tell me about him." "Tell me about her first." "Well"--she settled herself comfortably--"I'm sorry to see you come down to my own scandalmongering level. Do you want to put her into _Nonentities I Have Known_? If so, I'll Who's-Who her for you. Here goes. Bassett, Daphne, _née_ Daphne Wade. O.D. (only daughter, George) of Horatio Wade, rector of somewhere in Sussex, I forget where, but Julia Oliphant will tell you. He, the rector, M. (married) 1, Daphne's mother, and was M.B. (married by) 2, the child's governess. He died in the year of his Lord I forget exactly when, leaving Daphne a little money, otherwise I can hardly see Bassett marrying her. But Hugo pulled it off all right. My broker knows him. He's in the Oil Crush now, but he was playing margins on a capital of twenty pounds when Daphne (excuse my vulgarity) caught the last bus home." "She's a friend of Miss Oliphant's, is she?" "She was. She and Julia and Rose were children together. But I'm not sure Julia speaks to her since _The Parthian Arrow_. She meant it for him all right, whether he meant his for her or not. Life's full of quiet humour, isn't it?" I will abridge a little of my friend's liveliness. Indeed as she caught as it were out of the air something of my own mood, she dropped much of it herself. This was the substance of what she told me: