Quite well understanding that this was all part of her grandmother’s passion for putting the best face upon things, and having no belief in her eyebrows, Nedda bent forward; but in a sudden flutter of fear lest the Bigwigs might observe the operation, she drew back, murmuring:  “Oh, Granny, darling!  Not just now!”

At that moment the men came in, and, under cover of the necessary confusion, she slipped away into the window.

It was pitch-black outside, with the moon not yet up.  The bloomy, peaceful dark out there!  Wistaria and early roses, clustering in, had but the ghost of color on their blossoms.  Nedda took a rose in her fingers, feeling with delight its soft fragility, its coolness against her hot palm.  Here in her hand was a living thing, here was a little soul!  And out there in the darkness were millions upon millions of other little souls, of little flame-like or coiled-up shapes alive and true.

A voice behind her said: 

“Nothing nicer than darkness, is there?”

She knew at once it was the one who was going to bite; the voice was proper for him, having a nice, smothery sound.  And looking round gratefully, she said: 

“Do you like dinner-parties?”

It was jolly to watch his eyes twinkle and his thin cheeks puff out.  He shook his head and muttered through that straggly moustache: 

“You’re a niece, aren’t you?  I know your father.  He’s a big man.”

Hearing those words spoken of her father, Nedda flushed.

“Yes, he is,” she said fervently.

Her new acquaintance went on: 

“He’s got the gift of truth—­can laugh at himself as well as others; that’s what makes him precious.  These humming-birds here to-night couldn’t raise a smile at their own tomfoolery to save their silly souls.”

He spoke still in that voice of smothery wrath, and Nedda thought:  ’He is nice!’

“They’ve been talking about ‘the Land’”—­he raised his hands and ran them through his palish hair—­“‘the Land!’ Heavenly Father!  ‘The Land!’ Why!  Look at that fellow!”

Nedda looked and saw a man, like Richard Coeur de Lion in the history books, with a straw-colored moustache just going gray.

“Sir Gerald Malloring—­hope he’s not a friend of yours!  Divine right of landowners to lead ‘the Land’ by the nose!  And our friend Britto!”

Nedda, following his eyes, saw a robust, quick-eyed man with a suave insolence in his dark, clean-shaved face.

“Because at heart he’s just a supercilious ruffian, too cold-blooded to feel, he’ll demonstrate that it’s no use to feel—­waste of valuable time—­ha! valuable!—­to act in any direction.  And that’s a man they believe things of.  And poor Henry Wiltram, with his pathetic:  ’Grow our own food—­maximum use of the land as food-producer, and let the rest take care of itself!’ As if we weren’t all long past that feeble individualism; as if in these days of world markets the land didn’t stand or fall in this country as a breeding-ground of health and stamina and nothing else.  Well, well!”