"Child, it's time; we're off in a few minutes. But I think I've left everything in order. Maisie's downstairs; she has all my directions, and the list of stations to which she's to wire how you are while we're crossing the continent." "But, mother, I'm all right; it's not a bit necessary--" "Dear! You can't help my wanting to hear about you." "No; I know. I only meant you're not to worry." "Of course I won't worry; I wouldn't _let_ myself worry. You know how I feel about all that. And besides," added Mrs. Manford victoriously, "what in the world is there to worry about?" "Nothing," Nona acquiesced with a smile. Pauline bent down and placed a lingering kiss where Manford's lips had just brushed his daughter's forehead. Pauline played her part better--and made it correspondingly easier for her fellow-actors to play theirs. "Goodbye, mother dear. Have all sorts of a good time, won't you?" "It will be a very interesting trip--with a man as clever and cultivated as your father... If only you could have come with us! But you'll promise to join us in Egypt?" "Don't ask me to promise anything yet, mother." Pauline raised herself to her full height and stood looking down intently at her daughter. Under her smooth new face Nona again seemed to see the flicker of anxiety pass back and forward, like a light moving from window to window in a long-uninhabited house. The glimpse startled the girl and caught her by the heart. Suddenly something within her broke up. Her lips tightened like a child's, and she felt the tears running down her cheeks. "Nona! You're not crying?" Pauline was kneeling at her side. "It's nothing, mother--nothing. Go! Please go!" "Darling--if I could only see you happy one of these days." "Happy?" "Well, I mean like other people. Married--" the mother hastily ventured. Nona had brushed away her tears. She raised her head and looked straight at Pauline. "Married? Do you suppose being married would make me happy? I wonder why you should! I don't want to marry--there's nobody in the world I would marry." She continued to stare up at her mother with hard unwavering eyes. "Marry! I'd a thousand times rather go into a convent and have done with it," she exclaimed. "A convent--Nona! Not a _convent_?" Pauline had got to her feet and stood before her daughter with distress and amazement breaking through every fissure of her paint. "I never heard anything so horrible," she said. Deeper than all her eclectic religiosity, deeper than her pride in receiving the Cardinal, deeper than the superficial contradictions and accommodations of a conscience grown elastic from too much use, Nona watched, with a faint smile, the old Puritan terror of gliding priests and incense and idolatry rise to the surface of her mother's face. Perhaps that terror was the only solid fibre left in her. "I sometimes think you want to break my heart, Nona. To tell me this now! ... Go into a convent ..." the mother groaned.