Shortly expressed, he wanted to marry her; he had not, he told himself oddly, ever been married.  The word had a significance which heretofore he had completely missed.  A strange emotion stirred into being, a longing thrown out from his new desire, the late-born feeling of dissatisfaction; it was a wish for something in Susan Brundon which he experienced but could not name.  Roughly stated it was a hunger to surround her with security, comfort, to fortify the, at best, doubtful position of life in death for her.  Yet he acknowledged to himself that this regard for her safety was mostly the result of his own inner, blind striving.  Her happiness had magically become his.  Beyond that he was unable to penetrate.

After supper they gathered in the chamber beyond the dining room.  Here Jasper Penny found an incongruous mingling of old and new furniture.  There was a high, waxed walnut desk and cabinet, severely simple, and before it a chair with a back of elaborately carved and gilded tulips tufted in plum-coloured velvet.  The thick carpet was a deep rose, and the drapery of the mantel and windows garnet.  A painted hood of brilliant Chinese colours had been fastened before what was evidently an open hearth, for which a coal stove was substituted.  On the middle of the floor was an oriental hassock in silver brocade; while a corner held a spinet-piano decorated in roseate cupids, flower sprays and gold leaf.  Again, an old clock in Spanish mahogany, with a rudely painted glass door, had been left on the wall.

Mary Jannan, at the piano, wove a delicate succession of arpeggios.  She sang, in a small and graceful voice, a cavatina, Tanti Palpiti.  Then, “Ah, que les amours ... de beaux heurs.”  Jasper Penny listened with an unconscious, approving pretence of understanding.  But when, in the course of her repertoire, she reached Sweet Sister Fay, and The Horn of My Loved One I Hear, his pleasure became active.  Susan Brundon, on the hassock, lifted her sensitive face to the mild candle light, and its still pallor gave him a shock of delight.  Her hands were folded in the voluminous sweep of her crinoline; the ribbons at her breast rose and fell softly.

Jasper Penny and Graham were smoking long, fragrant cigars that the former had produced from a lacquered case, and Jannan had the ingredients of the hot punch at his elbow.  It amused the young man to persuade Susan Brandon to take a sip from his glass; and they all laughed at her subsequent gasping.  Jasper Penny was astoundingly happy; his being radiated a warmth and contentment more potent than that of the St. Croix rum.  It was accompanied by an extraordinary lightness of spirit, a feeling of the desirability of life.  The memory of his greying hair had left him; not, it was true, to be replaced by the surging emotions of youth, but by a deep satisfaction.