It was a Saturday and Mr. and Mrs. Eliot were dining out, so Rosie was not in the kitchen slapping at a roast. The days were still getting shorter and a weak yellow light could be glimpsed out the windows. It was Hildy’s day off and the house seemed especially quiet. While Lilian made the tea, sounds echoing in the high-ceilinged room, Arthur and Walter Vail loitered in the hall, glancing through doorways to the dining room, the living room. Walter Vail held his head back and picked out the Copley portrait above the mantelpiece and Arthur commended him, hands in pockets, eyes low-lidded, expressing little in his monotone, on having selected the most precious painting in the room.

They lit a fire in the library and Lilian brought the tea tray out from the gloom of the pantry. Arthur smoked a cigarette near an open window with the furtiveness of one not allowed tobacco. The cold air drew the smoke out in a graceful line.

It was pleasant to have Walter Vail there. His interest in Lilian made for an extra glow in the room as they chatted by the fire. She held herself upright, her brown eyes, intent, glanced out from a level brow. At the moment, he fancied her more than she did him. She wasn’t sure what she thought of him, liking his attention, feeling he was different. The boys she knew would find nothing unusual in her being a girl from Boston. It made her feel different too.

D’you know anyone over there? Lilian said.

Why sure, a few.

Forrey Cooper, from where we go in Maine, just joined the navy, Lilian said. He’s only sixteen.

He is not sixteen, said Arthur. More like eighteen. Arthur was usually right about these things.

Well it’s young either way, she said. How old are you?

Walter Vail braced himself in an odd way against the sofa arm, uncomfortable to be answering questions about himself. Twenty, he said. For an instant Lilian wondered if he were lying.

She handed him a second cup of tea and he met her gaze with a penetrating stare, shocking her. She had the feeling he was testing her with rules from a world she didn’t know. She unbent herself to put another log on the fire. Sitting back down, having composed herself, she watched him talk, not having the least idea what he was saying.

They heard some stomping at the door. Mr. Eliot came in first, the coat closet being just outside the library, and appeared to detect Arthur’s smoke, his face sharp and disapproving, the round reflection of his glasses hiding the expression in his eye. They’d been visiting old Uncle Bill in Brookline.