“Wrong head, handsome head!  I’m in despair about you.  Why in the world cannot artists conform to the recognised customs of a perfectly pleasant and respectable world?  Don’t answer me!  You’ll make me very unhappy....  Now go and talk to Stephanie.  The child won’t understand your going to-night, but make the best of it to her.”

“Good Lord, Lily!  I haven’t a string tied to me.  It doesn’t matter to Stephanie what I do—­why I go or remain.  You’re all wrong.  Stephanie and I understand each other.”

“I’ll see that she understands you” said his sister, sorrowfully.

He laughed and kissed her again, impatient.  But why he was impatient he himself did not know.  Certainly it was not to find Stephanie, for whom he started to look—­and, on the way, glanced at his watch, determined not to miss the train that would bring him into town in time to talk to Valerie West over the telephone.

Passing the lighted and open windows, he saw Querida and Alice absorbed in a tete-a-tete, ensconced in a corner of the big living room; saw Gordon playing with Heinz, the dog—­named Heinz because of the celebrated “57 varieties” of dog in his pedigree—­saw Miss Aulne at solitaire, exchanging lively civilities with Sandy Cameron at the piano between charming bits of a classic ballad which he was inclined to sing: 

  “I’d share my pottage
    With you, dear, but
  True love in a cottage
    Is hell in a hut.”

“Is that you, Stephanie?” he asked, as a dark figure, seated on the veranda, turned a shadowy head toward him.

“Yes.  Isn’t this starlight magnificent?  I’ve been up to the nursery looking at the infant wonder—­just wild to hug him; but he’s asleep, and his nurse glared at me.  So I thought I’d come and look at something else as unattainable—­the stars, Louis,” she added, laughing—­“not you.”

“Sure,” he said, smiling, “I’m always obtainable.  Unlike the infant upon whom you had designs,” he added, “I’m neither asleep nor will any nurse glare at you if you care to steal a kiss from me.”

“I’ve no inclination to transfer my instinctively maternal transports to you,” she said, serenely, “though, maternal solicitude might not be amiss concerning you.”

“Do you think I need moral supervision?”

“Not by me.”

“By whom?”

“Ask me an easier one, Louis.  And—­I didn’t say you needed it at all, did I?”

He sat beside her, silent, head lifted, examining the stars.

“I’m going back on the midnight,” he remarked, casually.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, with her winning frankness.

“I’m—­there’s something I have to attend to in town—­”

“Work?”

“It has to do with my work—­indirectly—­”

She glanced sideways at him, and remained for a moment curiously observant.

“How is the work going, anyway?” she asked.

He hesitated.  “I’ve apparently come up slap against a blank wall.  It isn’t easy to explain how I feel—­but I’ve no confidence in myself—­”