And now, on the very Friday when he was expecting his new discovery—the Tracys' young cousin from the West—Tarrant had suddenly turned up for lunch. When his wife heard his latchkey she supposed he had brought young Weston back with him, and she had been pleased, and rather surprised, since it would have been more like him to want to parade his new friend among his colleagues. Possibly Weston had not turned out to be the kind to parade—though his young poet's face and profound eyes had lingered rather picturesquely in her memory. Still, it was three years since they'd met, three years during which he'd been reporter on a smalltown newspaper. Perhaps the poetry had not survived… .

Her husband came in alone, late, and what she called "rumpled-looking," though no outward disorder was ever visible in his carefully brushed person, and the signs she referred to lurked only about his mouth and eyes.

"Any lunch left? I hope there's something hot—never mind what." And, as he dropped into his seat, and the parlourmaid disappeared with hurried orders, he added, unfolding his napkin with a sardonic deliberation: "Well, your infant prodigy never turned up."

Ah, how well she knew that law of his nature! Plans that didn't come off were almost always ascribed (in all good faith) to others; and the prodigy who had failed him became hers. She smiled a little to see him so ridiculously ruffled by so small a contretemps. "Genius is proverbially unpunctual," she suggested.

"Oh, genius—" He shrugged the epithet away. She might have that too, while she was about it. "After all, he may never do anything again. One good story doesn't make a summer."

"No, and mediocrity is apt to be unpunctual as genius."

"Unpunctual? The fellow never came at all. Fixed his own hour—eleven. I put off two other important appointments and hung about the office waiting till after half-past one. I'd rather planned to take him round to the Café Jacques for lunch. A young fellow like that, from nowhere, often thaws out more easily if you feed him first, and encourage him to talk about himself. Vanity," said Tarrant, as the maid approached with a smoking dish, "vanity's always the first button to press… . Eggs? Good Lord, Halo, hasn't that cook learnt yet that eggs are slow death to me? Oh, well, I'll eat the bacon—What else? A chop she can grill? The inevitable chop! Oh, of course it'll do." He turned to his wife with the faint smile which etched little dry lines at the corners of his mouth. "I can't say you've your mother's culinary imagination, Halo."

"No, I haven't," she answered good-humouredly; but a touch of acerbity made her add: "It would be rather wasted on a digestion like yours."