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did that gentle aristocrat with the
face like a grey bowler.
Mr. Scogan might look like an extinct saurian, but Gombauld was altogether and
essentially human. In the old-fashioned natural histories of the 'thirties he might have
figured in a steel engraving as a type of Homo Sapiens--an honour which at that time
commonly fell to Lord Byron. Indeed, with more hair and less collar, Gombauld would
have been completely Byronic--more than Byronic, even, for Gombauld was of
Provencal descent, a black- haired young corsair of thirty, with flashing teeth and
luminous large dark eyes. Denis looked at him enviously. He was jealous of his talent: if
only he wrote verse as well as Gombauld painted pictures! Still more, at the moment, he
envied Gombauld his looks, his vitality, his easy confidence of manner. Was it surprising
that Anne should like him? Like him?--it might even be something worse, Denis reflected
bitterly, as he walked at Priscilla's side down the long grass terrace.
Between Gombauld and Mr. Scogan a very much lowered deck-chair presented its back
to the new arrivals as they advanced towards the tea-table. Gombauld was leaning over it;
his face moved vivaciously; he smiled, he laughed, he made quick gestures with his
hands. From the depths of the chair came up a sound of soft, lazy laughter. Denis started
as he heard it. That laughter--how well he knew it! What emotions it evoked in him! He
quickened his pace.

In her low deck-chair Anne was nearer to lying than to sitting. Her long, slender body
reposed in an attitude of listless and indolent grace. Within its setting of light brown hair
her face had a pretty regularity that was almost doll-like. And indeed there were moments
when she seemed nothing more than a doll; when the oval face, with its long-lashed, pale
blue eyes, expressed nothing; when it was no more than a lazy mask of wax. She was
Henry Wimbush's own niece; that bowler-like countenance was one of the Wimbush
heirlooms; it ran in the family, appearing in its female members as a blank doll-face. But
across this dollish mask, like a gay melody dancing over an unchanging fundamental bass,
passed Anne's other inheritance--quick laughter, light ironic amusement, and the
changing expressions of many moods. She was smiling now as Denis looked down at her:
her cat's smile, he called it, for no very good reason. The mouth was compressed, and on
either side of it two tiny wrinkles had formed themselves in her cheeks. An infinity of
slightly malicious amusement lurked in those little folds, in the puckers about the
half-closed eyes, in the eyes themselves, bright and laughing between the narrowed lids.
The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty chair between Gombauld and
Jenny and sat down.
"How are you, Jenny?" he shouted to her.
Jenny nodded and smiled in mysterious silence, as though the subject of her health were a
secret that could not be publicly divulged.
"How's London been since I went away?" Anne inquired from the depth of her chair.
The moment had come; the tremendously amusing narrative was waiting for utterance.
"Well," said Denis, smiling happily, "to begin with..."
"Has Priscilla told you of our great antiquarian find?" Henry Wimbush leaned forward;
the most promising of buds was nipped.
"To begin with," said Denis desperately, "there was the Ballet..."
"Last week," Mr. Wimbush went on softly and implacably, "we dug up fifty yards of
oaken drain-pipes; just tree trunks with a hole bored through the middle. Very interesting
indeed. Whether they were laid down by the monks in the fifteenth century, or whether..."
Denis listened gloomily. "Extraordinary!" he said, when Mr. Wimbush had finished;
"quite extraordinary!" He helped himself to another slice of cake. He didn't even want to
tell his tale about London now; he was damped.
For some time past Mary's grave blue eyes had been fixed upon him. "What have you
been writing lately?" she asked. It would be nice to have a little literary conversation.
"Oh, verse and prose," said Denis--"just verse and prose."
"Prose?" Mr. Scogan pounced alarmingly on the word. "You've been writing prose?"

"Yes."
"Not a novel?"
"Yes."
"My poor Denis!" exclaimed Mr. Scogan. "What about?"
Denis felt rather uncomfortable. "Oh, about the usual things, you know."
"Of course," Mr. Scogan groaned. "I'll describe the plot for you. Little Percy, the hero,
was never good at games, but he was always clever. He passes through the usual public
school and the usual university and comes to London, where he lives among the artists.
He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe
upon his shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in
Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous