Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a little gold-and-ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to." The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford merely laughed--a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration. "I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating the fact impartially to the room. "Oh, what a pity--I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her. "Grape-fruit, I think--though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise me, Nona--!" She turned to her sister-in-law. "Promise you what?" "Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail." Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up. "I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity. Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down his napkin and walked out of the room. Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice were a kiss. "When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter. "Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder." "For any particular part of the globe?" Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called." Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so beautiful. A vase? No--a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior. As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps... Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore! Why on earth don't people telephone?" She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all, that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy.