it he'd come like a shot; but he couldn't stay
there, because it wouldn't be good enough.

He was absolutely serious, and absolutely firm in the logic of his
position. For he argued that, if he allowed himself to be taken back as
though nothing had happened, this, more than anything he could well
think of, would be giving Peggy away.

He sent his love to his mother and Dorothy, and promised to come out and
dine with them as soon as he had got his job.

So Anthony drove back without him. But as he drove he smiled. And
Frances smiled, too, when he told her.

"There he is, the young monkey, and there he'll stay. It's magnificent,
but of course he's an ass."

"If you can't be an ass at twenty," said Frances, "when can you be?"

They said it was so like Nicky. For all he knew to the contrary his
career was ruined; but he didn't care. You couldn't make any impression
on him. They wondered if anybody ever would.

Dorothy wondered too.

"What sort of rooms has he got, Anthony?" said Frances.

"Very nice rooms, at the top of the house, looking over the river."

"Darling Nicky, I shall go and see him. What are you thinking of,
Dorothy?"

Dorothy was thinking that Nicky's address at Chelsea was the address
that Desmond had given her yesterday.

XIII

When Frances heard that Nicholas was going about everywhere with the
painter girl they called Desmond, she wrote to Vera to come and see her.
She could never bring herself to go to the St. John's Wood house that
was so much more Mr. Lawrence Stephen's house than it was Vera's.

The three eldest children went now and then, refusing to go back on
Vera. Frances did not like it, but she had not interfered with their
liberty so far as to forbid it positively; for she judged that
frustration might create an appetite for Mr. Stephen's society that
otherwise they might not, after all, acquire.

Vera understood that her husband's brother and sister-in-law could
hardly be expected to condone her last aberration. Her attachment to
Ferdie Cameron had been different. It was inevitable, and in a sense
forgivable, seeing that it had been brought about by Bartie's sheer
impossibility. Besides, the knowledge of it had dawned on them so
gradually and through so many stages of extenuating tragedy, that, even
when it became an open certainty, the benefit of the long doubt
remained. And there was Veronica. There was still Veronica. Even without
Veronica Vera would have had to think