The table beside the bed held books and a lamp, and an ashtray. Sabrina was strangely reassured at sight of them. He was an entirely rightminded person anyway. He read in bed. She rounded the foot of the bed and approached the door in the wall on the other side, pulled it open a few inches and peeked in. A small bathroom, modern and complete, lighted by a narrow window, with a gay oiled silk shower curtain and a gay linoleum under foot. He had let himself go, there. She withdrew from the bathroom, a little startled, and found the group of pictures on her immediate right.

She turned to them, but not hopefully, for a man wouldn’t put up his own picture in his own room. There was a middle-aged soldier in khaki, with a lot of gold braid on his cap—a colonel at least, she decided, possibly a general—she had no experience in soldiers. It was a thin, kindly, humorous face, with wide dark eyes and a strong, beautiful mouth under the small military mustache. Perhaps his father? And if so, was there possibly a resemblance? Was he a soldier too? Somehow she hoped not. Somehow she was almost sure that he was not.

Next there was a large photograph of a snowy mountain peak—she had no way of knowing it for Everest with his eternal plume. Next, another photograph of a yacht under full sail—perhaps the old King’s Britannia—sky, wind, and water, and the leaning sail. Last, a group of boys in football suits, seated on a lawn. Boys about twelve or fourteen years old. She bent closer. He must be there among them if only she knew which one he was. For a long time she stared at the picture. At last she turned away with a sigh of frustration, and was facing the wardrobe.

But that would be as bad as opening desk drawers, and she had promised herself not to go as far as that. That would be unpardonable prying.