The maid thought not. And old Jolyon, passing down the gallery, stole on tiptoe towards the nursery, and opened the doorwhose hinges he kept specially oiled that he might slip in and out in the evenings without being heard.

But Holly was asleep, and lay like a miniature Madonna, of that type which the old painters could not tell from Venus,when they had completed her. Her long dark lashes clung to her cheeks; on her face was perfect peace — her littlearrangements were evidently all right again. And old Jolyon, in the twilight of the room, stood adoring her! It was socharming, solemn, and loving — that little face. He had more than his share of the blessed capacity of living again in theyoung. They were to him his future life — all of a future life that his fundamental pagan sanity perhaps admitted. There shewas with everything before her, and his blood — some of it — in her tiny veins. There she was, his little companion, to bemade as happy as ever he could make her, so that she knew nothing but love. His heart swelled, and he went out, stilling thesound of his patent-leather boots. In the corridor an eccentric notion attacked him: To think that children should come tothat which Irene had told him she was helping! Women who were all, once, little things like this one sleeping there! ‘I mustgive her a cheque!’ he mused; ‘Can’t bear to think of them!’ They had never borne reflecting on, those poor outcasts;wounding too deeply the core of true refinement hidden under layers of conformity to the sense of property — wounding toogrievously the deepest thing in him — a love of beauty which could give him, even now, a flutter of the heart, thinking ofhis evening in the society of a pretty woman. And he went downstairs, through the swinging doors, to the back regions.There, in the wine-cellar, was a hock worth at least two pounds a bottle, a Steinberg Cabinet, better than any Johannisbergthat ever went down throat; a wine of perfect bouquet, sweet as a nectarine — nectar indeed! He got a bottle out, handling