"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though--yes. That used to be in the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture. "Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster used to hang--Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I saw it whenever I looked up..." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What have you done with it? Why did you take it away?" Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her blush. "I didn't. That is--Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's been there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted Dexter is to Jim." Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of me ... of course... Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in, seeing everything so much the same... You must excuse my turning up in this way; I had to see you about something important... Hullo, Nona--" "Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down--here by the fire. You must be cold after your wet journey ... so unseasonable, after the weather we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her accent of indomitable hospitality. XXIX NONA, that night, in her mother's doorway, wavered a moment and then turned back. "Well, then--goodnight, mother." "Goodnight, child." But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up her maid to undress her. "Can I unfasten you, mother?" "Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired..." "No; I'm not tired. But you..." "I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline switched on the lamps. "Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner. Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire. In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously. "I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother." Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since renounced the attempt to keep up with them.