A hiccough near us caused us to look toward the door.

“It is only Des, in his usual afternoon trim,” said Ben.

She nodded, as he pushed open the door, thrusting in his head.  “What the hell are you doing here?  This region is sacred to Chaos and old Night,” striking the panels, first one and then the other, with the tassels of his dressing-gown.  No one answered him.  Adelaide counted a row of books, and Ben whistled.

“Damn you, Ben,” he said, in a languid voice:  “you never seem bored.  Curse you all.  I hate ye, especially that she-Calmuck yonder—­that Siberian-steppe-natured, malachite-hearted girl, our sister.”

“Oh come away, Mr. Desmond.  What are the poor things doing that you should harry them?” and the woman who had brought in the baby the day of the dinner laid her hands on him and pulled him away.

“Sarah will never give him up,” said Ben.

“She swears there is good in him.  I think he is a wretch,” turning over the leaves of a book with her beautiful hand, such a hand as I had just seen beating the door—­such a hand as clasped its fellow in Ben’s hair.  Adelaide was not embarrassed at my presence.  She neither sought nor avoided my look.  But Ben said, “You are thinking.”

“Is she?” And Adelaide raised her eyes.

“You are all so much alike,” I said.

“You are right,” she answered seriously.  “Our grandfather—­”

“Confound him!” broke in Ben.  “I wish he had never been born.  Are you proud, Addie, of being like the Pickersgills?  But I know you are.  Remember that the part of us which is Pickersgill hates its like.  I am off; I am going to walk.”

Adelaide coolly said, after he had gone, that he was very visionary, predicting changes that could not be, and determined to bring them about.

“Why did he bring me here?” I asked, as if I were asking in a dream.

“Ben’s hospitality is genuine.  He is like pa.  Besides, you are related to us—­on the Somers side, and are the first visitor we ever saw, outside of mother’s connection.  Do you not know, too, that Ben’s friendship is very sincere—­very strong?”

“I begin to comprehend the Pickersgills,” I remarked as if in a dream.  “How words with any meaning glance off, when addressed to them.  How impossible it is to return the impression they give.  How incapable they are of appreciating what they cannot appropriate to the use of their idiosyncrasies.”

She gazed at me, as if she heard an abstract subject discussed, with a slight interest in her black eyes.

“Are they vicious to the death?” I went on with this dream.  “It is not fair—­their overpowering personality—­it is not fair to others.  It overpowers me, though I know it is all fallacious.”

“I am ignorant of Ethical Philosophy.”

“Miss Somers,” said Murphy, knocking, “if Major Millard is below?”

“I am coming.”