Towards ten o’clock Tommy made his appearance. The daily calls to inquire after her health and happiness had grown to be a sacred observance. But as the studio was rigorously closed to him during the daylight hours his visits were vespertilian. If she wanted him, she told him to stay. If she didn’t, she sent him about his business. He had got into the habit of kissing her, nephew fashion, when they met and parted. She liked the habit now, for she felt that the boy loved her very dearly. And in an aunt-like, and very satisfying and comfortful way, she, too, loved him with all her heart. “Can I stay?” She nodded. He removed the set palette from the chair on to which she had cast it when Vandermeer was announced, and sat down. “What have you been doing with yourself?” He entered upon a long story. Some picture or the other was shaping splendidly. His uncle had taken Etta and himself to lunch at the Savoy. “Said he was thinking of going to Dinard for August. Rum place for him to go, isn’t it?” Clementina repressed manifestation of interest in the announcement. But it set her pulses throbbing. “I suppose he can go where he likes, can’t he?” she snapped. “What kind of a lunch did you have?” Tommy ran through the menu. It was his own selection. He had given the dear old chap some hints in gastronomy. It was wonderful how little he knew of such essential things. Seemed to have set his heart on giving them pheasant. In July. After that they had gone to see the New Futurists. His uncle seemed to know all about them. Wonderful work; but they were all erring after false gods. He thanked heaven he had her, Clementina, to keep him orthodox. It was all absinthe and morphia. He rattled on. Clementina, leaning far back in her chair, watched the curls of cigarette smoke with shining eyes and a Leonardesque smile lurking at the corners of her lips. “Why, Clementina!” he cried, with sudden indignation. “You’re paying not the slightest attention to me.” “Never mind, Tommy,” she said. “You go on talking. It helps me to think. I’m going to have a devil of a time—the time of my life!” “What in the world are you going to do?” “Never mind, Tommy. Never mind. Oh, what a fool I was not to think of it before!” CHAPTER XXIII The next morning Clementina put off a sitter, a thing which she had never done before, and, letting work go hang, made an unprecedented irruption into Russell Square. “It’s about this dinner of yours,” she said as soon as Quixtus appeared. “I telephoned you yesterday that I was coming.” “And I said, my dear Clementina, that I was more than delighted.”