-shows, and what not; troubled me very little. On this occasion
the blond daughters were types of the sixties' survivals--the type that
unemotionally inspected albums. I was convoying them through a volume of
views of Switzerland, the dowager was saying to Miss Churchill:

"You think, then, it will be enough if we have...." When the door opened
behind my back. I looked round negligently and hastily returned to the
consideration of a shining photograph of the Dent du Midi. A very
gracious figure of a girl was embracing the grim Miss Churchill, as a
gracious girl should virginally salute a grim veteran.

"Ah, my dear Miss Churchill!" a fluting voice filled the large room, "we
were very nearly going back to Paris without once coming to see you. We
are only over for two days--for the Tenants' Ball, and so my aunt ...
but surely that is Arthur...."

I turned eagerly. It was the Dimensionist girl. She continued talking to
Miss Churchill. "We meet so seldom, and we are never upon terms," she
said lightly. "I assure you we are like cat and dog." She came toward me
and the blond maidens disappeared, everybody, everything disappeared. I
had not seen her for nearly a year. I had vaguely gathered from Miss
Churchill that she was regarded as a sister of mine, that she had, with
wealth inherited from a semi-fabulous Australian uncle, revived the
glories of my aunt's house. I had never denied it, because I did not
want to interfere with my aunt's attempts to regain some of the family's
prosperity. It even had my sympathy to a small extent, for, after all,
the family was my family too.

As a memory my pseudo-sister had been something bright and clear-cut and
rather small; seen now, she was something that one could not look at for
glow. She moved toward me, smiling and radiant, as a ship moves beneath
towers of shining canvas. I was simply overwhelmed. I don't know what
she said, what I said, what she did or I. I have an idea that we
conversed for some minutes. I remember that she said, at some point,

"Go away now; I want to talk to Mr. Gurnard."

As a matter of fact, Gurnard was making toward her--a deliberate, slow
progress. She greeted him with nonchalance, as, beneath eyes, a woman
greets a man she knows intimately. I found myself hating him, thinking
that he was not the sort of man she ought to know.

"It's settled?" she asked him, as he came within range. He looked at me
inquiringly--insolently. She said, "My brother," and