"My dear child," he answered in his special voice, which, like champagne,
seemed to have been dried by artifice, "you don't want to reopen the
whole thing?"

"But I can see he really is upset about it; he's looking so awfully white
and thin."

"He ought to give up that bathing in the Serpentine. At his age it's
monstrous. And surely any other girl will do just as well?"

"He seems to set store by reading to her specially."

Stephen shrugged his shoulders. It had happened to him on one occasion
to be present when Mr. Stone was declaiming some pages of his manuscript.
He had never forgotten the discomfort of the experience. "That crazy
stuff," as he had called it to Cecilia afterwards, had remained on his
mind, heavy and damp, like a cold linseed poultice. His wife's father
was a crank, and perhaps even a little more than a crank, a wee bit
"touched"--that she couldn't help, poor girl; but any allusion to his
cranky produce gave Stephen pain. Nor had he forgotten his experience at
dinner.

"He seems to have grown fond of her," murmured Cecilia.

"But it's absurd at his time of life!"

"Perhaps that makes him feel it more; people do miss things when they are
old!"

Stephen slid the drawer back into its socket. There was dry decision in
that gesture.

"Look here! Let's exercise a little common sense; it's been sacrificed
to sentiment all through this wretched business. One wants to be kind,
of course; but one's got to draw the line."

"Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?"

"The thing," went on Stephen, "has been a mistake from first to last.
It's all very well up to a certain point, but after that it becomes
destructive of all comfort. It doesn't do to let these people come into
personal contact with you. There are the proper channels for that sort
of thing."

Cecilia's eyes were lowered, as though she did not dare to let him see
her thoughts.

"It seems so horrid," she said; "and father is not like other people."

"He is not," said Stephen dryly; "we had a pretty good instance of that
this evening. But Hilary and your sister are. There's something most
distasteful to me, too, about Thyme's going about slumming. You see what
she's been let in for this afternoon. The notion of that baby being
killed through the man's treatment of his wife, and that, no doubt,
arising from the girl's leaving them, is most repulsive!"

To these words Cecilia answered with a sound almost like a gasp. "I
hadn't thou