derstand us."

"It's ridiculous anyway," said Jeffrey absently. He was regarding the
shine on Lydia's brown hair. "What's the use of Addington's being
overrun with Italy and Greece and Poland and Russia? We could get men
enough to work in the shops, good straight stock."

"Well," said Lydia conclusively, "we've got them now. They're here. So
we might as well learn to understand them and make them understand us."

Jeff smiled at her, the little soft young thing who seemed so practical.
Lydia looked like a child, but she spoke like the calm house mother who
had had quartered on her a larger family than the house would hold and
yet knew the invaders must be accommodated in decent comfort somewhere.
He sat there and stared at her until she grew red and fidgety. He seemed
to be questioning something in her inner mind.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Jeff, and got up and went away to his own room. He had
been thinking of her clear beauties of simple youthful outline and pure
restraints, and wondering why the world wasn't made so that he could
take her little brown hand in his and walk off with her and sit all day
on a piney bank and listen to birds and find out what she thought about
the prettiness of things. She was not his sister, she was not his child,
though the child in her so persuaded him; and in spite of the dewy
memory of her kiss she could not be his love. Yet she was most dear to
him.

He threw himself down on the sofa and clasped his hands under his head,
and he laughed suddenly because he was taking refuge in the thought of
Esther. That Esther had become sanctuary from his thoughts of Lydia was
an ironic fact indeed, enough to make mirth crack its cheeks. But since
he was bound to Esther, the more he thought of her the better. He was
not consciously comparing them, the child Lydia and the equipped siren,
to Esther's harm. Only he knew at last what Esther was. She was Circe on
her island. Its lights hung high above the wave, the sound of its music
beat across the foam. Reardon heard the music; so did Alston Choate.
Jeffrey knew that, in the one time he had heard Choate speak of her, a
time when he had been in a way compelled to; and though it was the
simplest commonplace, something new was beating in his voice. Choate had
heard Esther's music, he had seen the dancing lights, and Esther had
been willing he and all men should. There was no mariner who sailed the
seas so insignificant as not to be ha