“Sophy, Peacocks and Ivory is a very wonderful person, isn’t he?” hesitated Alicia, after a long pause.  She didn’t lift her head; and the cheek against my hand was warmer than usual.

“Yes,” I agreed, quietly, “so wonderful that something never to be replaced will have gone out of our lives when he goes away, and doesn’t come back any more.  For that is what the Nicholas Jelniks do, my dear.”

“Is it?” Again she spoke after a pause.  “I wonder!  Somehow, I—­Sophy, he belongs here.  He’s—­why, Sophy, he’s a part of the glamour.”

“I’m afraid glamour hasn’t part nor place in plain folks’ lives.”

“But we aren’t plain folks any more, either, Sophy,” she insisted.  “Why—­why—­we’re part of the glamour, too!”

“That is just about half true.”

Alicia ignored this.  She asked, instead: 

“Did you hear what that great blundering doctor said about tinkling out a tune on a piano?”

I could hear Mr. Jelnik praised by her or doubted by The Author.  But somehow I could not bear any criticism of Doctor Geddes just then.  I said stiffly: 

“I have learned to appreciate Doctor Geddes.”

“You are far too fair-minded not to.”  Presently:  “Sophy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We aren’t ever going to be sorry we came here—­together—­are we, Sophy?  And we won’t ever let anybody come between us.  Not anybody.  Not The Author—­nor his secretary—­nor whatever guests come—­nor Mr. Nicholas Jelnik—­nor—­nor Doctor Richard Geddes.”  Her head pressed closer to my knees.

“We came first, you and I,” said Alicia, in a muffled whisper.  “We are more to each other than any of them can be to us.  You’ll remember that, won’t you?”

“I will remember, you absurd Alicia!” But I did not ask my dear girl what her incoherent words might mean.  I did not ask why the soft cheek against my hand was wet.

As I have said before, Hynds House is but two stories high, with deep cellars under it, and an immense attic overhead; an attic all cut up into nooks and corners, and twists and turns, and sloping roofs and dormer windows, and two or three shallow steps going up here, and two or three more going down there, and passages and doors where you’d never look for them.  We had never been able fully to explore our attic.  It was Ali Baba’s cave to us, with half its treasures unguessed and every trunk and box whispering, “Say ’Open, Sesame,’ to me, and see what you’ll find!”

While I was sitting with Alicia’s head against my knee, a light, swift footstep sounded overhead in the attic, followed by a sort of stumble, as if somebody had slipped on one of those unexpected steps.  Alicia rose quickly.

“Sophy,” she breathed, “I have thought, once or twice, that I heard somebody walking in the attic.”

“We will soon find out who it is, then,” said I. Noiselessly we stole out into the hall, past the sleeping Westmacotes, and Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons who so longed to come in closer contact with the occult and unknown.  We moved like ghosts, ourselves, our felt-soled mules making no sound.