For a long time Ishmael paid the price of that night raid upon his physical resources, and when he was beginning to take up work again, as usual, Nicky was off to Canada—­off with the latest thing in outfits, letters of introduction, high hopes, and such excitement at thought of the new world at his feet that only at the last moment did the sorrow that because of the uncertainty of life all leave takings hold, strike him.  Then—­for he was a very affectionate boy—­he felt tears of which he was deeply ashamed burning in his eyes; he ignored them, made his farewells briefer, and was gone.

A few days later Judith came down to pay her promised visit.  Both Ishmael and Georgie drove over to meet her train, and both failed for the first startled moment to recognise her.  Ishmael had an incongruous flash, during which that occasion years earlier when he had seen her and Georgie walking down that same platform towards him was the more vivid actuality.

Judith’s epicene thinness had become gaunt, but it was not that so much as the colouring of her face and the fact that she was wearing pince-nez that made her an absolutely different being.  This was the third time in her life that Judy was coming down to the West.  Once it had been as a very young girl, full of dreams and questionings; once it had been as a woman who had already learned something of proportion; now it was as this elderly and alien person whom her friends could not connect with the Judith they had known.  Not till they saw the beam of her eyes, as profound but somehow less sad than the eyes of the girl had been, did they feel it was the same Judy.  The exaggerated colour on her face, the white powder and overdone rouge, embarrassed them both.  Judy saw it and laughed, and when they were in the waggonnette and driving along the road she said:  “You’re thinking how horribly I’m made up!  I can’t help it.  I began it and I found I couldn’t leave off, and that’s the truth.  And of course my eye for effect has got out.  But I don’t think I’m generally as bad as this.  It comes of having done myself up in the train.”

“But, Judy—­why?” asked Georgie.  She was very shocked, for in those days only actresses and women no better than they should be made up their faces.

“Because I began it so as to keep looking young as long as I could, and now I no longer care about keeping young-looking I can’t drop it.  That’s the worst of lots of habits which one starts for some one reason.  The reason for it dies and the habit doesn’t.  I know I overdo it, but it’s no good my telling myself so.  And it doesn’t matter much, after all.”

“No,” agreed Georgie, brightening; “after all, one loves ones friends just as much if they have mottled skins or a red nose in a cold wind or a shiny forehead, so why shouldn’t one love them just as much when they have too much pink and white on?  It looks much nicer than too little.”