solar systems to regain my
equilibrium. No, don't expostulate," as he rose in his eagerness to
confront her. "I seldom argue. It is not worth while. I merely
'express an opinion,' having the good fortune to belong to a race in
which women are permitted such an indulgence," and she threw a
laughing glance back at him from the window before she stepped out.

Meryl watched her with a swift look of deep affection in her eyes, and
then glanced at her father. Henry Pym's face was expressionless, but
his eyes seemed to reply to her unspoken question, and tell her that
he, too, recognised a little more thoroughly that under the surface
flippancy and light raillery there was depth. In the meantime, feeling
she had not been quite fair to her opponent, to go off without
allowing him to defend himself, he purposely discussed the language
question a little more openly than was at all his wont with such
prickly subjects, speaking a few quiet truths in a way that even a
firebrand like van Hert could not possibly resent. When they joined
Diana she was sitting on a table, swinging her feet, and singing a new
music-hall ditty.

"Touching that slander of yours," van Hert began, good-humouredly, for
few could ever be seriously annoyed with Diana, "I should like to say
..."

"No, I forbid it," she interrupted. "Arguments bore me. Have you heard
that little song before that I was singing? It's a ripping little
ditty. Chain Aunt Emily to the drawing-room sofa and I'll sing it all
through to you; but if she were to hear it she might faint, and that
is so tiresome."

He laughed, and sat on the table beside her, and the rabid sectarian
politician, so given to raising storms and creating scenes in that
most remarkable of parliaments, the South African Union Assembly,
forgot his pet injustices and prejudices, and was quickly the
versatile, virile, engaging social man. Meryl sat a little apart, with
some dainty crochet-work in her delicate fingers, and though the
visitor chatted with Diana, his eyes were almost always upon her.

They had purposely put out the electric light after their coffee was
served, preferring only the lights in the rooms behind them and the
splendour of the night before. And in the dimness Meryl's fair skin
gleamed unusually white beside her dusky hair, and the velvety,
blue-grey eyes, when she looked up, had caught the dreaming darkness
of the heavens. Only now and then she glanced round. Mostly she sat
with her eyes