He liked babies in their cribs, and especially this fat rascal of Jim's. Next to Nona, there was no one he cared for as much as Jim; and seeing Jim happily married, doing well at his bank, and with that funny little chap upstairs, stirred in the older man all his old regrets that he had no son.

Jim seldom got back early enough to assist at these visits; and Lita too, at first, was generally out. But in the last few months Manford had more often found her—or at least, having fallen into the habit of lingering over a cigarette in her boudoir, had managed to get a glimpse of her before going on to that other house where all the clocks struck simultaneously, and the week's engagements, in Maisie Bruss's hand, jumped out at him as he entered his study.

This evening he felt more than usually tired—of his day, his work, his life, himself—oh, especially himself; so tired that, the deep armchair aiding, he slipped into a half–doze in which the quietness crept up round him like a tide.

He woke with a start, imagining that Lita had entered, and feeling the elderly man's discomfiture when beauty finds him napping… But the room was empty: a movement of his own had merely knocked Miss Vollard's magazine to the floor. He remembered having brought it in to show Lita the photographs of Cedarledge which he supposed it to contain. Would there be time? He consulted his watch—an anachronism in that house—lit another cigarette, and leaned back contentedly. He knew that as soon as he got home Pauline, who had telephoned again that afternoon about the Mahatma, would contrive to corner him and reopen the tiresome question, together with another, which threatened to be almost equally tiresome, about paying that rotten Michelangelo's debts. "If we don't, we shall have him here on our hands: Amalasuntha is convinced you'll take him into the firm. You'd better come home in time to talk things over—." Always talking over, interfering, adjusting! He had enough of that in his profession. Pity Pauline wasn't a lawyer: she might have worked off her steam in office hours. He would sit quietly where he was, taking care to reach his house only just in time to dress and join her in the motor. They were dining out, he couldn't remember where.

For a moment his wife's figure stood out before him in brilliant stony relief, like a photograph seen through a stereopticon; then it vanished in the mist of his well–being, the indolence engendered by waiting there alone and undisturbed for Lita. Queer creature, Lita! His lips twitched into a reminiscent smile. One day she had come up noiselessly behind him and surprised him by a light kiss on his hair. He had thought it was Nona… Since then he had sometimes feigned to doze while he waited; but she had never kissed him again…

What sort of a life did she really lead, he wondered? And what did she make of Jim, now the novelty was over? He could think of no two people who seemed less made for each other. But you never could tell with a woman. Jim was young and adoring; and there was that red–headed boy…

Luckily Lita liked Nona, and the two were a good deal together. Nona was as safe as a bank—and as jolly as a cricket. Everything was sure to be right when she was there. But there were all the other hours, intervals that Manford had no way of accounting for; and Pauline always said the girl had had a queer bringing–up, as indeed any girl must have had at the hands of Mrs. Percy Landish. Pauline had objected to the marriage on that ground, though the modern mother's respect for the independence of her children had reduced her objection to mere shadowy hints of which Jim, in his transports, took no heed.

Manford also disliked the girl at first, and deplored Jim's choice. He thought Lita positively ugly, with her high cheekbones, her too small head, her glaring clothes and conceited lackadaisical airs. Then, as time passed, and the marriage appeared after all to be turning out well, he tried to interest himself in her for Jim's sake, to see in her what Jim apparently did. But the change had not come till the boy's birth. Then, as she lay in her pillows, a new shadowiness under her golden lashes, one petal of a hand hollowed under the little red head at her side, the vision struck to his heart. The enchantment did not last; he never recaptured it; there were days when what he called her "beauty airs" exasperated him, others when he was chilled by her triviality. But she never bored him, never ceased to excite in him a sort of irritated interest. He told himself that it was because one could never be sure what she was up to; speculating on what went on behind that smooth round forehead and those elusive eyes became his most absorbing occupation.

At first he used to be glad when Nona turned up, and when Jim came in from his bank, fagged but happy, and the three young people sat talking nonsense, and letting Manford smoke and listen. But gradually he had fallen into the way of avoiding Nona's days, and of coming earlier (extricating himself with difficulty from his professional engagements), so that he might find Lita alone before Jim arrived.

Lately she had seemed restless, vaguely impatient with things; and Manford was determined to win her confidence and get at the riddle behind that smooth round brow. He could not bear the idea that Jim's marriage might turn out to be a mere unsuccessful adventure, like so many others. Lita must be made to understand what a treasure she possessed, and how easily she might lose it. Lita Cliffe—Mrs. Percy Landish's niece—to have had the luck to marry Jim Wyant, and to risk estranging him! What fools women were! If she could be got away from the pack of frauds and flatterers who surrounded her, Manford felt sure he could bring her to her senses. Sometimes, in her quiet moods, she seemed to depend on his judgment, to defer rather touchingly to what he said…

The thing would be to coax her from jazz and night–clubs, and the pseudo–artistic rabble of house–decorators, cinema stars and theatrical riff–raff who had invaded her life, to get her back to country joys, golf and tennis and boating, all the healthy outdoor activities. She liked them well enough when there were no others available.