Into the eloquent and mendacious silence that was a gift of their caste the voice fell humbly:  “So there wasn’t?  I suppose I oughtn’t to have expected it.”

“Any time now, Gridley,” Hugh signalled to his familiar.  Like a response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair.  He swung around with the pivot of a definite purpose.  With an economy of movement that would have contented an efficiency expert he set a straight fiddle-backed chair squarely in front of Uncle Hugh’s girl and settled himself in it with his back to his own people.

“Mrs. Shirley,” he began, quietly, “will you talk to me, please?  I hope I shan’t startle you, but there are things I absolutely have to know, and this is my one chance.  I am entirely determined not to let it slip.  Talk to me, please, not to them.  As you have doubtless noticed, though excellent people where the things not flatly of this world are concerned, my uncle is a graven image and my aunt is a deaf mute.  As for me, I am just unbalanced enough to understand anything.”  He was aware of the rustle of consternation behind him and hurried on, ignoring that and whatever else might be happening there.  “That’s what I’m banking on now.  I intend to say my say and they are going to allow it, because it is dangerous to thwart queer people—­very dangerous indeed.  You know, they thwarted Uncle Hugh in every possible way.  My grandfather was a composite of those two, and all of them adored my uncle and contradicted him and watched him until he went over the border.  And they’re so dead scared that I’m going to follow him some day that they let me do quite as I please.”  He passed his hand across his eyes as though brushing away cobwebs.  “Will you be so good as to put your veil up.”

“Why—­why, certainly!” Mrs. Shirley faltered.  She uncovered her face and Hugh nodded to the witness within.

“Yes, he’d have liked that,” he told himself.  “Lots of expression and those beautiful haunted shadows about the eyes.”  He laughed gently.  “Don’t look so frightened.  I don’t bite.  Just humour me, as Uncle Winthrop is signalling you to do.  You understand, don’t you, that Uncle Hugh was the romance and the adventure of my life?  I’m still saturated with him, but there was lots of him that I could never get through to.  There never was a creature better worth knowing, and he couldn’t show me, or else I had blind spots.  There were vast tracts of undiscovered country in him, as far as I was concerned—­lands of wonder, east of the sun and west of the moon—­that sort of thing.  But I knew that there was a certain woman who must have been there, who held the heart of the mystery, and to-day, when this incredible chance came—­when you came—­I made up my mind that I was not going to be restrained nor baffled by the customs of my tribe.  I want the truth and I’m prepared to give it.  From the shoulder.  If you will tell me everything you know about him I promise to tell you everything I know.  You’ll want to—­” The sound of the closing door made him turn.  The room behind him was empty.  His manner quieted instantly.  “That’s uncommonly tactful of them....  You won’t think that they meant any discourtesy by leaving?” he added, anxiously.  “They wouldn’t do that.”