er lied; they knew perfectly well why
they were happy. Each knew that the other lied; each knew that the other
knew she knew; and neither of them could have said why she found it so
necessary to lie.

And to Frances this happiness of Mrs. Vereker, and of young Vereker and
Miss Lathom was significant and delightful, as if she had been
personally responsible for it.

* * * * *

A day flashed out of her memory on a trail of blue larkspurs and of
something that she had forgotten, something that was mixed up with Mr.
and Mrs. Jervis and Rosalind. She stared at the larkspurs as if they
held the clue--Nicky's face appeared among the tall blue spires, Nicky's
darling face tied up in a scarf, brown stripes and yellow
stripes--something to do with a White Cake--it must have been somebody's
birthday. Now she had it--Mr. Jervis's cricket scarf. It was the day of
Nicky's worst earache, the day when Mr. Vereker climbed the tree of
Heaven--was it possible that Mr. Vereker had ever climbed that
tree?--the day when Michael wouldn't go to the party--Rosalind's
birthday.

Eight candles burning for Rosalind. Why, it was nineteen years ago.
Don-Don was a baby then, and Michael and Nicky were only little boys.
And look at them now!

She fed her arrogance by gazing on the tall, firmly knit, slender bodies
of her sons, in white flannels, playing furiously and well.

"Dorothy is looking very handsome," Mrs. Jervis said. Yes, certainly
Dorothy was looking handsome; but Frances loved before all things the
male beauty of her sons. In Michael and Nicholas it had reached
perfection, the clean, hard perfection that would last, as Anthony's
had lasted.

She thought of their beauty that had passed from her, dying many deaths,
each death hurting her; the tender mortal beauty of babyhood, of
childhood, of boyhood; but this invulnerable beauty of their young
manhood would be with her for a long time. John would have it. John was
only a fairer Nicholas; but as yet his beauty had not hardened; his
boyhood lingered in the fine tissues of his mouth, and in his eyelids
and the soft corners of his eyes; so that in John she could still see
what Nicky had been.

She had adored Anthony's body, as if she had foreseen that it would give
her such sons as these; and in her children she had adored the small
bodies through whose clean, firm beauty she foresaw the beauty of their
manhood. These were the same bodies, the same face