The little boys had succeeded with the inspired tactlessness of children in emphasizing and exaggerating what she had wished could be passed over unnoticed, a gesture of hers as inexplicable to her as to them.  Oh well, the best thing, of course, was to carry it off matter-of-factly, turn the leaf back, and let them see it.  And then refute them by insisting on the literal truth of what she had said.

“There!” she said carelessly; “look at it then.”

The little boys bent their eager faces over it.  Paul read out the title as he had been doing for the other photographs, “’View of the Campagna from the top of the cable-railway at Rocca di Papa.  Rome in the distance.’”

She had to sustain, for an instant, an astonished and disconcerted look from all those eyes.  It made her quite genuinely break into a laugh.  It was really a joke on them.  She said to the little boys mischievously, “What did Mother say?  Do you find it very interesting?”

Paul and Mark stared hard at the very dull photograph of a cliff and a plain and not even a single person or donkey in it, and gave up the riddle.  Mother certainly had spoken to them in that hide-it-away-from-the-children voice, and yet there was nothing there.

Marise knew that they felt somehow that Mother had unfairly slipped out between their fingers, as grown-ups are always doing.  Well, it wasn’t fair.  She hated taking advantage of them like that.  It was a sort of sin against their awakening capacity to put two and two together and make a human total, and understand what went on about them.

But it hadn’t been against their capacity to put two and two together that she had instinctively thrown up that warding-off arm, which hadn’t at all warded off attention, but rather drawn it hard and scrutinizing, in spite of those down-dropped sharp eyes.  Well, there was no sum he could do with only two, and slight probability he would ever get the other two to put with it . . . whatever the other two might be.

Mr. Welles’ pleasant old voice said, “It’s a very pretty picture, I’m sure.  They certainly have very fine views about the Eternal City.  I envy you your acquaintance with all those historic spots.  What is the next one?”

Dear old Mr. Welles!  What a restful presence!  How unutterably sweet and uncomplicated life could be with a good big dose of simplicity holding everything in a clear solution, so that it never occurred to you that what things seemed was very different from what they were.

“Ready to turn over, dears?” she asked the little boys.  This time she was in her usual control of the machine, regulated what she did from the first motion to the last, made her voice casual but not elaborately so, and put one arm around Mark’s slim little shoulder with just the right degree of uninterest in those old and faded photographs.

Very deep down, at the edge of consciousness, something asked her, “Why did you try to hide that photograph?”