"More 'n ever then," muttered Ellen darkly, "because his Jewness is all bottled up in him, ready to burst out on you unexpected, like a Jack-in-the-Box--You needn't laugh, Joie--you kin see it all in that eye of his. The rest of him don't look so Jewy, but if ever I see a Sheenier eye--! I don't hold with an eye that shows all it feels that way, myself. Seems sort of shameless." "Indecent exposure of the eye," murmured Joan, "does not confine itself to the Semitic race, Nellen. It seems common to all people who do a good deal of thinking. One can't seem to mask the eye. The more that goes on behind it, the more it reflects--As witness my own," she added complacently. Her next warning came from a higher quarter. Happening to encounter Mrs. Carmichael in the shops one day, that lady invited her to drive home in her carriage, where she proceeded to catechise her with tongue and lorgnon. "You are looking very charming, dear child--one wonders at not seeing you about more? I hear your interesting friend is still in town, however. Perhaps it is he who absorbs so much of your time." Joan admitted the imputation. "Oh, really? Your husband is very complaisant!--Still, Mr. Blair would naturally be democratic in his point of view." "Democratic? I think I don't understand." The older lady shrugged; an Anglo-Saxon shrug, portentous in effect. "Oh, these writing-people--it's so difficult to tell who they are, isn't it? But Emily tells me you've always been singularly courageous." "It does not take a great deal of courage," said Joan, flushing, "to continue my mother's friendship with the most brilliant man I know. There even seem to be people who envy me the opportunity." (This shot told, Mrs. Carmichael having been one of the first and most eager to entertain the visiting celebrity.) "Doubtless he is brilliant as a writer," she conceded. "That is his profession. But even as a writer (I know nothing of him, of course, otherwise!) do you consider him quite safe, my dear? Those plays, for instance." "Have you read them?" asked Joan bluntly. "Why, not yet. I bought them, of course--one does. But one has so little time for reading. I am told, however, that in one of them a child is born practically on the stage. At least the characters converse about it quite openly." "Shocking of them," murmured Joan. "Those things should be managed by means of asterisks. But it's so hard to find actors who play asterisks acceptably." Mrs. Carmichael's lorgnon busied itself. "I should be sorry," remarked its owner, "to think that any friend of my daughter's would care to encourage indelicacy, whether in literature or--or in life." "Dear me, yes!--life is indelicate enough anyway, without our encouragement, isn't it?" murmured Joan. She felt, perhaps justly, that she had come out of this encounter with the honors of war. But Joan could ill afford to make enemies....