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It was odd that Stephen the elder and Stephen the younger should have been the only two persons in his life to find the real inside of him they, too, and perhaps Norah Monogue. But, otherwise, not Bobby, nor Cards, nor Alice Galleon, nor Mr. Zanti nor Clare. Not Clare. He faced the fact with a sudden shudder.

There followed then Miss Norah Monogue, a girl with a pleasant smile and untidy hair, Miss Dall, a lady with a very stiff back, a face like an interrogation mark, because her eyebrows went up in a point and a very tight black dress, Mr. Herbert Crumley, and Mr. Tressiter, two pleasant-faced, cheerful people, who sat very close together as though they were cold.

She had had, from the first, a great liking for Peter. He had never known how much of that affection was an incoherent madness and he had never in any way analysed his own feeling for her, but now he was surprised at the acute sharpness of his regret. On a bright evening of sunshine, about six o'clock, she died Mrs. Brockett, the Tressiters, Norah Monogue also were with her at the time.

Peter was standing by the window turning over some fashion papers of an ancient date, when he saw that Miss Monogue was at his elbow.

He kissed her hand and then getting on to his feet again, stood looking at her awkwardly, struggling for words with which to comfort her. And then at luncheon, there was a little, pencilled feeble note for Peter from Norah Monogue. "Please, if you can spare half an hour come to me. In a day or two I am off to the country."

When Peter came in, Norah Monogue was sitting in a low chair over a rather miserable fire; a little pool of light above her head came from two candles on the mantelpiece otherwise the room was in darkness. "Shall I turn on the gas?" she said, when she saw who it was. "No, leave it as it is, I like it." He sat down in a chair near her and put a pile of manuscript on the floor beside him.

And yet he was astonishingly simple about it all very young and very naive. The two things that he felt about it were, first, that it would please very much his friends Bobby and his wife, Mrs. Brockett, Norah Monogue, Mr. Zanti, Herr Gottfried and, above all, Stephen; and secondly, that all those early years in Cornwall the beatings, his mother, Scaw House, even Dawson's had been of use to him.

Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue and then all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old ... more miserable than he had ever been. He kissed Robin again then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett.

"I think," said Robin, reflectively, "that now I will hunt for the lion and the tigers on the stairs " "Bring him into my room until his bedtime," said Miss Monogue, laughing. "It's safer. Mrs. Tressiter is busy and has quite enough children in with her already."

Miss Monogue could not move; the scene, the place, the incidents were slowly fading away, and the room slowly coming back again. The face opposite her, also, gradually seemed to drop, as though it had been a mask, the expression that it had worn.