Marcelle went off to her duties smiling pensively. What a happy woman would be the right woman for Godfrey. Wax in her hands—but wax of the purest. She was astonished at the transformation from cloud to sunshine which she, elderly spinster nearly double his age, had effected, and her nerves tingled with a sense of feminine power. Her thoughts switched off from son to father. They were so much alike—from the feminine point of view, basically children. Were not her fears groundless? Could she not play upon the man as she played upon the boy? Recent experience answered yes. But then she faced the root difference. To the boy she surrendered nothing. To the man she would have to pay for any measure of domination the price of an indurated habit of existence, the change of which was fraught with intolerable fear. No. She could take, take all that she wanted. But she could not give. There was nothing in her to give. Better this beautiful autumn friendship than a false recrudescence of spring, in which lay disaster and misery and disillusion. As for the boy, God was good to have brought him into her life. Meanwhile, Baltazar walked home to Godalming with Quong Ho in gay spirits. It was just like the modern young Englishman to shy at the depths and attack the surface. And, after all, as a more alert glance assured him, the surface of Quong Ho deserved the censure of any reasonable being. One could almost hear his garments flap in the autumn wind. “I fear,” said Quong Ho apologetically, “that my care in selecting this costume was not sufficiently meticulous.” “Godfrey’ll soon put that right,” laughed Baltazar. “Anyhow, it’s the man inside the clothes that matters.” And when he came to think of it, he perceived that the man inside had had little opportunity of revealing himself, he, Baltazar, having done the talking for the two of them. Quong Ho had comported himself very ceremoniously. His manners, though somewhat florid in English eyes, had been unexceptionable, devoid of self-consciousness and awkward attempts at imitation. He had responded politely to the conventional questions of Marcelle and Godfrey, but there his conversation had stopped. Of the rare gem presented to them they had no notion. Never mind. Once let Quong Ho give them a taste of his quality, and they could not choose but take him to their bosoms. Which, by the end of the Friday shopping excursion, was an accomplished fact. Now that Marcelle had assumed responsibility, Godfrey, after the way of man, regarded the attiring of Quong Ho as a glorious jest. His bright influence melted Quong Ho’s Oriental reserve. Encouraged to talk, he gave them sidelights on the life at Spendale Farm which neither had suspected. His description, in his formal, unhumorous English, of the boxing lessons, delighted Godfrey. “The old man must be a good sport,” he remarked to Marcelle.