Wyant's sallow cheek-bones reddened slightly. "It's awfully kind, as you say; but if my going south is to result in upsetting everybody else's arrangements--" "Oh, rot, father." Jim spoke with sudden irritability. "Manford would hate it if you chucked now; wouldn't he, Nona? And I do want Lita to get away somewhere, and I'd rather it was to Cedarledge than anywhere." The clock struck, and he pulled himself out of his chair. Nona noticed with a pang how slack and half-hearted all his movements were. "Jove--I must jump!" he said. "We're due at some cabaret show that begins early; and I believe we dine at Ardwin's first, with a bunch of freaks. By-bye, Nona... Stan... Goodbye, father. Only a fortnight now before we cut it all!" The door shut after him on a silence. Wyant reached for his pipe and filled it. Heuston stared at the tea-table. Suddenly Wyant questioned: "Look here--why is Jim being shipped off to the island with me when his wife's going to Cedarledge?" Nona dropped from her sofa-arm and settled into an armchair. "Simply for the reasons he told you. They both want a holiday from each other." "I don't believe Jim really wants one from Lita." "Well, so much the worse for Jim. Lita's temporarily tired of dancing and domesticity, and the doctor says she ought to go off for a while by herself." Wyant was slowly drawing at his pipe. At length he said: "Your mother's doctor told her that once; and she never came back." Nona's colour rose through her pale cheeks to her very forehead. The motions of her blood were not impetuous, and she now felt herself blushing for having blushed. It was unlike Wyant to say that--unlike his tradition of reticence and decency, which had always joined with Pauline's breezy optimism in relegating to silence and non-existence whatever it was painful or even awkward to discuss. For years the dual family had lived on the assumption that they were all the best friends in the world, and the vocabulary of that convention had become their natural idiom. Stanley Heuston seemed to catch the constraint in the air. He got up as if to go. "I suppose we're dining somewhere too--." He pronounced the "we" without conviction, for every one knew that he and his wife seldom went out together. Wyant raised a detaining hand. "Don't go, Stan. Nona and I have no secrets--if we had, you should share them. Why do you look so savage, Nona? I suppose I've said something stupid... Fact is, I'm old-fashioned; and this idea of people who've chosen to live together having perpetually to get away from each other... When I remember my father and mother, for sixty-odd years... New York in winter, Hudson in summer... Staple topics: snow for six months, mosquitoes the other. I suppose that's the reason your generation have got the fidgets!" Nona laughed. "It's a good enough reason; and anyhow there's nothing to be done about it."