ecision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty
other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the
sun comes up in the west. Of course--often! Some day he was going to
melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever
after. Another diamond he was going to plant. They say----He did it all
gravely, absorbedly. About it he was as conscienceless as a savage. This
was no fancy spun to pleasure a child. This was like lying, for its own
sake.

He went on talking with Lulu, and now again he was the tease, the
braggart, the unbridled, unmodified male.

Monona stood in the circle of his arm. The little being was attentive,
softened, subdued. Some pretty, faint light visited her. In her
listening look, she showed herself a charming child.

"It strikes me," said Ninian to Lulu, "that you're going to do something
mighty interesting before you die."

It was the clear conversational impulse, born of the need to keep
something going, but Lulu was all faith.

She closed the oven door on her pies and stood brushing flour from her
fingers. He was looking away from her, and she looked at him. He was
completely like his picture. She felt as if she were looking at his
picture and she was abashed and turned away.

"Well, I hope so," she said, which had certainly never been true, for
her old formless dreams were no intention--nothing but a mush of
discontent. "I hope I can do something that's nice before I quit," she
said. Nor was this hope now independently true, but only this surprising
longing to appear interesting in his eyes. To dance before him. "What
would the folks think of me, going on so?" she suddenly said. Her mild
sense of disloyalty was delicious. So was his understanding glance.

"You're the stuff," he remarked absently.

She laughed happily.

The door opened. Ina appeared.

"Well!" said Ina. It was her remotest tone. She took this man to be a
pedlar, beheld her child in his clasp, made a quick, forward step, chin
lifted. She had time for a very javelin of a look at Lulu.

"Hello!" said Ninian. He had the one formula. "I believe I'm your
husband's brother. Ain't this Ina?"

It had not crossed the mind of Lulu to present him.

Beautiful it was to see Ina relax, soften, warm, transform, humanise. It
gave one hope for the whole species.

"Ninian!" she cried. She lent a faint impression of the double _e_ to
the initial vowel. She slurred the rest, until th