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that he
must have stopped reading years ago. Even novels were too great a
strain on his attention. As far back as Nona could remember he had
fared only on the popular magazines, picture–papers and the weekly
purveyors of social scandal. He took an intense interest in the
private affairs of the world he had ceased to frequent, though he
always ridiculed this interest in talking to Nona or Heuston.
    While he sat there, deep in his armchair, with bent shoulders, sunk
head and clumsy bandaged foot, Nona saw him, as she always did, as
taller, slimmer, more handsomely upstanding than any man she had
ever known. He stooped now, even when he was on his feet; he was
prematurely aged; and the fact perhaps helped to connect him with
vanished institutions to which only his first youth could have
belonged.
    To Nona, at any rate, he would always be the Arthur Wyant of the
race–meeting group in the yellowing photograph on his mantelpiece:
clad in the gray frock–coat and topper of the early 'eighties, and
tallest in a tall line of the similarly garbed, behind ladies with
puffed sleeves and little hats tilting forward on elaborate hair.
How peaceful, smiling and unhurried they all seemed! Nona never
looked at them without a pang of regret that she had not been born
in those spacious days of dogcarts, victorias, leisurely tennis and
afternoon calls…
    Wyant's face, even more than his figure, related him to that past:
the small shapely head, the crisp hair grown thin on a narrow
slanting forehead, the eyes in which a twinkle still lingered, eyes
probably blue when the hair was brown, but now faded with the rest,
and the slight fair moustache above an uncertain ironic mouth.
    A romantic figure; or rather the faded photograph of one. Yes;
perhaps Arthur Wyant had always been faded—like a charming
reflection in a sallow mirror. And all that length of limb and
beauty of port had been meant for some other man, a man to whom the
things had really happened which Wyant had only dreamed.
    His visitor, though of the same stock, could never have inspired
such conjectures. Stanley Heuston was much younger—in the middle
thirties—and most things about him were middling: height,
complexion, features. But he had a strong forehead, his mouth was
curved for power and mockery, and only his small quick eyes
betrayed the uncertainty and lassitude inherited from a Wyant
mother.
    Wyant, at Nona's approach, held out a dry feverish hand. "Well,
this is luck! Stan was just getting ready to fly at your mother's
approach, and you turn up instead!"
    Heuston got to his feet, and greeted Nona somewhat ceremoniously.
"Perhaps I'd better fly all the same," he said in a singularly
agreeable voice. His eyes were intent on the girl's.
    She made a slight gesture, not so much to detain or dismiss as to
signify her complete indifference. "Isn't mother coming
presently?" she said, addressing the question to Wyant.
    "No; I'm moved on till tomorrow. There must have been some big
upheaval to make her change her plans at the last minute. Sit down
and tell us all about it."
    "I don't know of any upheaval. There's only the dinner–dance for
Amalasuntha this evening."
    "Oh, but that sort of thing is in your mother's stride. You
underrate her capacity. Stan has been giving me a hint of
something a good deal more volcanic."
    Nona felt an inward tremor; was she going to hear Lita's name? She
turned her glance on Heuston with a certain hostility.
    "Oh, Stan's hints—."
    "You see what Nona thinks of my views on cities and men," Heuston
shrugged. He had remained on his feet, as though about to take
leave; but once again the girl felt his eager eyes beseeching her.
    "Are you waiting to walk home with me? You needn't. I'm going to
stay for hours," she said, smiling across him at Wyant as she
settled down into one of the chintz armchairs.
    "Aren't you a little hard on him?" Wyant suggested, when the door
had closed on their visitor. "It's not exactly a crime to want to
walk home with