her, a dark-skinned, longish face with a slightly-protruding
nether lip, hollow temples, and a round chin, deeply cleft. As in all
the others, the eyes, even in the dead pigment, seemed to shine with an
odd, fixed luminosity of their own, and like the others from first to
last of the line, it bore upon it the stamp of an imperishable youth.
And all the while he stood there, drinking it in, detail by detail, his
mother spoke, not of the face, but of the frame, some obscure and
unsuspected excellence in the gold-leaf on the frame.

More than once in that stately tour of halls and chambers he found
himself protesting gaily, "I know, Mother! I know, I know!"

But the contagion of his glory did not seem to touch her. Nothing seemed
to touch her. Only once was the fragile, bright shell of her punctilio
penetrated for a moment, and that was when Christopher, lagging, turned
back to a door they were about to pass and threw it open with the happy
laugh of a discoverer. And then, even before she could have hushed him,
the laughter on his lips died of itself.

A man lay on a bed in the room, his face as colourless and still as the
pillow behind it. His eyes were open, but they did not move from the
three candles burning on the high bureau, and he seemed unconscious of
any intrusion.

"I didn't know!" Christopher whispered, shocked, and shamed.

When the door was closed again his mother explained. She explained at
length, concisely, standing quite still, with one frail, fine hand
worrying the locket she wore at her throat. Nelson stood quite still
too, his attention engrossed in his candle-wicks. And Christopher stood
quite still, and all their shadows--That man was the caretaker, the man,
Christopher was to understand, who had been looking after the place. His
name was Sanderson. He had fallen ill, very ill. In fact, he was dying.
And that was why his mother had had to come down, post-haste, without
warning. To see about some papers. Some papers. Christopher was to
understand--

Christopher understood. Indeed there was not much to understand. And
yet, when they had gone on, he was bothered by it. Already, so young he
was, so ruthless, and so romantic, he had begun to be a little ashamed
of that fading, matter-of-fact world of Concord Street. And it was with
just that world which he wished to forget, that the man lying ill in the
candle-lit chamber was linked in Christopher's memory. For it was the
same man he had seen in the