She grew skilful at inventing pretexts for seeing Mildred, and if in their talk Pender’s name was not spoken, she returned home feeling empty. She brooded over each scrap of knowledge, piecing them together. Very soon she was in possession of all that Mildred could give her.

It appealed to her imagination that by the strangest of chances Pender had been born in Glasgow.

His father a Hungarian actor with a self-cultivated talent for scene-painting, and his mother, an English parson’s daughter, she, eloping with the elder Louis, had made a quite noteworthy career for herself on the stage, had been staying in theatrical lodgings in Glasgow when their only child was born. Later they had ceased their roving life, establishing themselves at Ealing; and until she became an old woman, Madame Pender – as she called herself in her widowhood – had maintained some reputation as a teacher of elocution in that suburb.

From the first, young Louis had showed a gift for drawing, and his mother had let him follow his bent at the Art School. He had quarrelled with his teachers, been disliked by his fellow-students, and failed to win all save one of the scholarships on which his parent’s heart was set. But even so there was never any doubt of his ability. And now at middle age, after many rebuffs and much bad fortune, he had in his own peculiar way arrived.

Concerning his marriage, Joanna could not bring herself to question her friend directly. But there was no need. For here, with some head-shaking, Mildred was at her most communicative.

He had married young, she said, – a handsome girl of more distinguished social connections than his own. And his wife’s money, though it had unfortunately been lost within a few years of their marriage, had helped at a critical time in his career. It was common talk that for many years past he had foraged for love (though always with certain discretion) outside matrimony; and surprise was sometimes expressed that an open break had never occurred. Now it was no longer expected. People understood that the couple were held together by worldly interest and by their twin sons, born in the first year of marriage, old enough now for one to be in the army and the other just entering the Indian Civil Service.

III

At Sans Souci, apart from Phemie herself, it was the music which had become the great attraction for Joanna.

Though Phemie was the only one who had been trained save in the most haphazard way, the whole family was gifted with music, and the sisters, besides having good natural voices possessed an extraordinary sense of style.