The ten days on the island? Oh, glorious, of course--hot sunshine--a good baking for his old joints. Awfully kind of her father to invite him ... he'd appreciated it immensely ... was going to write a line of thanks... Jim, too, had appreciated his father's being included... Only, no, really; he couldn't stay; in the circumstances he couldn't... "What circumstances, Exhibit? Getting the morning papers twenty-four hours late?" Wyant frowned, looked at her sharply, and then laughed an uneasy wrinkled laugh. "Impertinent chit!" "Own up, now; you were bored stiff. Communion with Nature was too much for you. You couldn't stick it. Few can." "I don't say I'm as passive as Jim." "Jim's just loving it down there, isn't he? I'm so glad you persuaded him to stay." Wyant frowned again, and stared past her at some invisible antagonist. "It was about the only thing I _could_ persuade him to do." Nona's hand hung back from the lighting of another cigarette. "What else did you try to?" "What else? Why to _act_, damn it ... take a line ... face things ... face the music." He stopped in a splutter of metaphors, and dipped his bristling moustache toward his coffee. "What things?" "Why: is he going to keep his wife, or isn't he?" "He thinks that's for Lita to decide." "For Lita to decide! A pretext for his damned sentimental inertness. A man--my son! God, what's happened to the young men? Sit by and see ... see... Nona, couldn't I manage to have a talk with your mother?" "You're having one with me. Isn't that enough for the moment?" He gave another vague laugh, and took a light from her extended cigarette. She knew that, though he found her mother's visits oppressive, he kept a careful record of their number, and dimly resented any appearance of being "crowded out" by Pauline's other engagements. "I suppose she comes up to town sometimes, doesn't she?" "Sometimes--but in such a rush! And we'll be back soon now. She's got to get ready for the Cardinal's reception." "Great doings, I hear. Amalasuntha dropped in on me yesterday. She says Lita's all agog again since that rotten Michelangelo's got a film contract, and your father's in an awful state about it. Is he?" "The family are not used yet to figuring on the posters. Of course it's only a question of time." "I don't mean in a state about Michelangelo, but about Lita." "Father's been a perfect brick about Lita." "Oh, he has, has he? Very magnanimous.--Thanks; no--no cigar... Of course, if anybody's got to be a brick about Lita, I don't see why it's not her husband's job; but then I suppose you'll tell me..." "Yes; I shall; please consider yourself told, won't you? Because I've got to get back to the hospital." "The modern husband's job is a purely passive one, eh? That's your idea too? If you go to him and say: 'How about that damned scoundrel and your wife'--" "What damned scoundrel?"