the drawing-room;
but she glanced up with a smile as Jimmy entered, and told him to take
the chair next to hers. After all, he looked presentable, this brother
of hers, at any rate, in evening dress, a little thin for his height and
rather yellow in the face perhaps, but still there was about him a
certain indefinable air of distinction which most men she knew lacked.
There were girls who might even call him handsome. As she thought of
that, her mouth hardened momentarily. She must guard against any folly
of that sort by not introducing him in dangerous quarters until he was
in a very much better position financially. The last thought suggested a
question she had been intending to ask him at the first opportunity.

"What are you thinking of doing now, Jimmy? I suppose you still intend
to remain at home?"

Henry Marlow muttered something about the evening paper. He was always
tactful where his wife was concerned, and this was a Grierson concern,
in which he might seem an intruder. May would tell him anything there
was to tell later.

Jimmy, remembering Walter's reception of his news, hesitated slightly.
The assurance with which Douglas Kelly's words had filled him was oozing
out rather rapidly. It was one thing to decide on a literary career when
one was in a Bohemian club and the time was long after midnight; but,
somehow, in an essentially staid drawing-room, where there was more than
a hint of Victorian influence in the furniture, and with a sense of a
heavy dinner still oppressing him, matters seemed different. After all,
it was only natural that it should be so. He was a Grierson, with a
veneration for conventions in his blood, and, in the appropriate
surroundings, the force, so long latent as to be practically forgotten,
began to make itself felt, not very strongly, perhaps, but still the
fact remained that it was there. Just as his father had given in at
last, and gone to the City, so, for a moment, it seemed to Jimmy that he
must go. But then he remembered Walter's office, where you could not
smoke, and the only spot of colour was that inartistic insurance
calendar with its grim lists of figures.

"I'm going to write," he said, "or at least try to write. I think I can
make a living at it. It's worth trying. There's nothing else, you see,"
he added, a little lamely.

May stopped in the middle of a stitch, and stared at him with something
akin to dismay. She remembered an article of his she had once read,
uns