Tomorrow she would be back again in the old house, with the old people and the old dogs and the old trees and follow her old routine--old, old. That was the price she must pay for being a kid when she should have been a woman. Palgrave stood at the sideboard and carved a cold chicken decorated with slips of parsley. "Have you ever gone into a room in which you've never been before and recognized everything in it or done some thing for the first time that you suddenly realize isn't new to you?" "Yes, often," replied Joan. "Why?" "You've never sat in that chair until this minute and this chicken was probably killed this morning. But I've seen you sitting in just that attitude at that table and cut the wing of this very bird and watched that identical smile round your lips when I put the plate in front of you." He put it in front of her and the scent of her hair made him catch his breath. "Oh, my God!" he said to himself. "This girl--this beautiful, cool, bewitching thing--the dew of youth upon her, as chaste as unsunned snow--Oh, my God...." But Joan had caught the scent of honeysuckle, and back into her brain came that cottage splashed with sun, the lithe figure of Harry Oldershaw with his face tanned the color of mahogany and the clear voice of "Mrs. Gray." Gilbert filled her glass with champagne cup, carved for himself and sat at the foot of the table. "The man from whom I bought this place," he said, saying anything to make conversation and keep himself rig idly light and, as he hoped, like Oldershaw, "owns a huge ready-made clothes store on Broadway--appalling things with comic belts and weird pockets." "Oh!" said Joan. Always, for ever, the scent of honeysuckle would bring that picture back. Martin--Martin. "He makes any amount of money by dressing that portion of young America which sells motors and vacuum cleaners and gramaphone records and hangs about stage doors smoking cheap cigarettes." "Yes?" Joan listened but heard nothing except that high clear voice coming through the screen door. "He built this cottage as an antidote and spent his week-ends here entirely alone with the trees and crickets, trying to write poetry. He was very pleased with it and believed that this atmosphere was going to make him immortal." "I see,"--but all she saw was a porch covered with honeysuckle, a hammock with an open book face downwards in it and the long shadow of Harry Oldershaw flung across the white steps. Gilbert went on--pathetically unable to catch the unaffected young stuff of the nice boy and his kind. He had never been young.