Lennox Boynton got up and retrieved a ball of wool that the old lady had dropped.

"Here you are. Mother."

"Thank you."

What was she knitting, this monumental, impassive old woman? Something thick and coarse. Gerard thought: "Mittens for inhabitants of a workhouse!" and smiled at his own fantasy.

He turned his attention to the youngest member of the party-the girl with the golden red hair. She was, perhaps, seventeen. Her skin had the exquisite clearness that often goes with red hair. Although over-thin, it was a beautiful face. She was sitting smiling to herself-smiling into space. There was something a little curious about that smile. It was so far removed from the Solomon Hotel, from Jerusalem… It reminded Dr. Gerard of something… Presently it came to him in a flash. It was the strange unearthly smile that lifts the lips of the Maidens in the Acropolis at Athens-something remote and lovely and a little inhuman… The magic of the smile, her exquisite stillness, gave him a little pang.

And then with a shock, Dr. Gerard noticed her hands. They were concealed from the group around her by the table, but he could see them clearly from where he sat. In the shelter of her lap they were picking-picking-tearing a delicate handkerchief into tiny shreds.

It gave him a horrible shock.

The aloof remote smile-the still body-and the busy destructive hands…

4

There was a slow asthmatic wheezing cough-then the monumental knitting woman spoke.

"Ginevra, you're tired; you'd better go to bed."

The girl started; her fingers stopped their mechanical action.