she looked at her, meaning, no doubt, to decide the argument, which was otherwise too evenly balanced, by declaring that Rachel was not comparable to her own children.  “She really might be six years old,” was all she said, however, this judgment referring to the smooth unmarked outline of the girl’s face, and not condemning her otherwise, for if Rachel were ever to think, feel, laugh, or express herself, instead of dropping milk from a height as though to see what kind of drops it made, she might be interesting though never exactly pretty.  She was like her mother, as the image in a pool on a still summer’s day is like the vivid flushed face that hangs over it.

Meanwhile Helen herself was under examination, though not from either of her victims.  Mr. Pepper considered her; and his meditations, carried on while he cut his toast into bars and neatly buttered them, took him through a considerable stretch of autobiography.  One of his penetrating glances assured him that he was right last night in judging that Helen was beautiful.  Blandly he passed her the jam.  She was talking nonsense, but not worse nonsense than people usually do talk at breakfast, the cerebral circulation, as he knew to his cost, being apt to give trouble at that hour.  He went on saying “No” to her, on principle, for he never yielded to a woman on account of her sex.  And here, dropping his eyes to his plate, he became autobiographical.  He had not married himself for the sufficient reason that he had never met a woman who commanded his respect.  Condemned to pass the susceptible years of youth in a railway station in Bombay, he had seen only coloured women, military women, official women; and his ideal was a woman who could read Greek, if not Persian, was irreproachably fair in the face, and able to understand the small things he let fall while undressing.  As it was he had contracted habits of which he was not in the least ashamed.  Certain odd minutes every day went to learning things by heart; he never took a ticket without noting the number; he devoted January to Petronius, February to Catullus, March to the Etruscan vases perhaps; anyhow he had done good work in India, and there was nothing to regret in his life except the fundamental defects which no wise man regrets, when the present is still his.  So concluding he looked up suddenly and smiled.  Rachel caught his eye.

“And now you’ve chewed something thirty-seven times, I suppose?” she thought, but said politely aloud, “Are your legs troubling you to-day, Mr. Pepper?”

“My shoulder blades?” he asked, shifting them painfully.  “Beauty has no effect upon uric acid that I’m aware of,” he sighed, contemplating the round pane opposite, through which the sky and sea showed blue.  At the same time he took a little parchment volume from his pocket and laid it on the table.  As it was clear that he invited comment, Helen asked him the name of it.  She got the name; but she got also a disquisition upon