On the doorstep, in the motor, she continued to move in the resonance of the outrageous question: "_Well_--_isn't he_?" The violence of her recoil left her wondering what use there was in trying to patch up a bond founded on such a notion of marriage. Would not Jim, as his wife so lightly suggested, run more chance of happiness if he could choose again? Surely there must still be some decent right-minded girls brought up in the old way ... like Aggie Heuston, say! But Pauline's imagination shivered away from that too... Perhaps, after all, her own principles were really obsolete to her children. Only, what was to take their place? Human nature had not changed as fast as social usage, and if Jim's wife left him nothing could prevent his suffering in the same old way. It was all very baffling and disturbing, and Pauline did not feel as sure as she usually did that the question could be disposed of by ignoring it. Still, on the drive home her thoughts cleared as she reflected that she had gained her main point--for the time, at any rate. Manford had enjoined her not to estrange or frighten Lita, and the two women had parted with a kiss. Manford had insisted that Lita should be induced to take no final decision till after her stay at Cedarledge; and to this also she had acquiesced. Pauline, on looking back, began to be struck by the promptness of Lita's surrender, and correspondingly impressed by her own skill in manœuvring. There _was_ something, after all, in these exercises of the will, these smiling resolves to ignore or dominate whatever was obstructive or unpleasant! She had gained with an almost startling ease the point which Jim and Manford and Nona had vainly struggled for. And perhaps Lita's horrid insinuation had not been a voluntary impertinence, but merely the unconscious avowal of new standards. The young people nowadays, for all their long words and scientific realism, were really more like children than ever... In Pauline's boudoir, Nona, curled up on the hearth, her chin in her hands, raised her head at her mother's approach. To Pauline the knowledge that she was awaited, and that she brought with her the secret of defeat or victory, gave back the healing sense of authority. "It's all right, darling," she announced; "just a little summer shower; I always told you there was nothing to worry about." And she added with a smile: "You see, Nona, some people _do_ still listen when your old mother talks to them." XIX IF only Aggie Heuston had changed those sour-apple curtains in the front drawing-room, Nona thought--if she had substituted deep upholstered armchairs for the hostile gilt seats, and put books in the marqueterie cabinets in place of blue china dogs and Dresden shepherdesses, everything in three lives might have been different...