his uncle exceptional expertness in the art of self-protection, but there was a limit even to self-protection.  There must be some other reason.  Discretion?  More likely, and yet how absurd!  Had Mr. Denby been alive, a meticulous, a fantastic delicacy might have intervened, but Mr. Denby was dead.  Who were there to wound, or who left for the telling of tales?  A doctor and the servants.  This was not altogether reasonable, despite what he knew of his uncle.  Here was some oddity of psychology he could not follow.  He heard the curtains stir as his uncle reentered.  He looked up, attentive and curious, but his uncle’s face was the mask to which he was accustomed.

“How is Mrs. Denby?” he asked.

Mr. McCain hesitated for the fraction of a second.  “I am afraid, very ill,” he said.  “Very ill, indeed!  It is pneumonia.  I—­the doctor thinks it is only a question of a little time, but—­well, I shall continue to hope for the best.”  There was a metallic harshness to his concluding words.  “Shall we go into the library?” he continued.  “I think the coffee will be pleasanter there.”

They talked again of the war; of revolution; of the dark forces at large in the world.

Through that hour or two Adrian had a nakedness of perception unusual even to his sensitive mind.  It seemed to him three spirits were abroad in the quiet, softly-lit, book-lined room; three intentions that crept up to him like the waves of the sea, receded, crept back again; or were they currents of air? or hesitant, unheard feet that advanced and withdrew?  In at the open windows poured at times the warm, enveloping scent of the spring; pervading, easily overlooked, lawless, persistent, inevitable.  Adrian found himself thinking it was like the presence of a woman.  And then, overlapping this, would come the careful, dry, sardonic tones of his uncle’s voice, as if insisting that the world was an ordinary world, and that nothing, not even love or death, could lay disrespectful fingers upon or hurry for a moment the trained haughtiness of the will.  Yet even this compelling arrogance was at times overtaken, submerged, by a third presence, stronger even than the other two; a presence that entered upon the heels of the night; the ceaseless murmur of the streets; the purring of rubber tires upon asphalt; a girl’s laugh, high, careless, reckless.  Life went on.  Never for a moment did it stop.

“I am not sorry that I am getting old,” said Mr. McCain.  “I think nowadays is an excellent time to die.  Perhaps for the very young, the strong—­but for me, things are too busy, too hurried.  I have always liked my life like potpourri.  I liked to keep it in a china jar and occasionally take off the lid.  Otherwise one’s sense of perfume becomes satiated.  Take your young girls; they remain faithful to a love that is not worth being faithful to—­all noise, and flushed laughter, and open doors.”  Quite unexpectedly he began to talk in a way he had never talked before.  He held his cigar in his hand until the ash turned cold; his ringers trembled just a little.