She had been looking out of the window while he soliloquized--it was part of the whole sub-tropical spectacle of her that she should limit herself to so few hours, and then be as languid as if she had leased a suite at the St. Justin for life. She turned just as Peter had made up his mind to speak. “There was one summer when you wanted to go to the Caucasus, I remember--a rather queer trip that was going to cost a great deal. We were sorry--I was dreadfully sorry--that you couldn’t go.” Peter frowned. There you were! She crammed the supreme interview of a lifetime into an hour, and then had the audacity to be irrelevant. “We couldn’t afford it just then. It--it was a very expensive year. I had to tell Spencer we couldn’t. I hope you didn’t hate us for it.” Peter laughed. “I didn’t even know you had anything to do with it. Old Martin didn’t tell me it was funds. He just wet-blanketed the whole thing--said it wasn’t safe and he couldn’t hear of it. I didn’t mind much. I went to Murray Bay to visit another chap. But, I say--do you mean old Martin asked you?” “He cabled.” “And you?” “I cabled back.” “Has he been consulting you about me all these years? In cases like that, when I didn’t dream of it?” “Oh, only occasionally,” she hastened to say. “We haven’t been spying on you.” “No, I should hope not.” Then he called himself a queer duck, aggrieved for twenty years because he hadn’t been spied on, and now aggrieved at the thought that he might be. “Was it you, by the way,” he asked, “who were interested in my affairs, or my father?” Her pronouns had been a little confusing. “Your father has had, more and more, to leave all correspondence to me.” For the first time, her words came glibly. She had evidently packed that sentence in her trunk before starting. “Is he so very ill?” Peter had veered at last to an interest in his other parent; it was clear that his other parent was the real clue to the mystery. “Oh, horribly--horribly!” It was almost a cry. She bent forward. “So ill, Peter, so ill that you mustn’t come now, ever. He loathes it so--being so ill. And he is so very proud--as why shouldn’t he be? Can’t you see how he would mind? Do you think I’d have come if it had been possible to send for you? Do you think I’d have left him if there had been any other way? I’m not sure, as it is, that I ought to have come. It has been terrible, to be getting farther away every day; to know that I’m as far away from him as it is possible to be on this earth. And think what it must be for him, alone--and _there_!” Well, she was as pathetic now as any little old lady in a gray shawl could be; only she was, somehow, tragic too. Her face was like the white grave of beauty. Peter was stupefied. “There?” he repeated. She flung out her hands. “On a savage island. Think of him on a savage island!”