little for
ever! In another four years even Don-Don would be grown-up--Don-Don who
was such a long time getting older that at fourteen, only two years
ago, he had been capable of sitting in her lap, a great long-legged,
flumbering puppy, while mother and son rocked dangerously together in
each other's arms, like two children, laughing together, mocking
each other.

She was going to be wiser with Don-Don than she had been with Nicky. She
would be wiser with Michael when he came back from Germany. She would
keep them both out of the Vortex, the horrible Vortex that Lawrence
Stephen and Vera had let Nicky in for, the Vortex that seized on youth
and forced it into a corrupt maturity. After Desmond's affair Anthony
and Frances felt that to them the social circle inhabited by Vera and
Lawrence Stephen would never be anything but a dirty hell.

As for Veronica, the longer she stayed in Germany the better.

Yet Frances knew that they had not sent Veronica to Dresden to prevent
her mother from getting hold of her. When she remembered the fear she
had had of the apple-tree house, she said to herself that Desmond was a
judgment on her for sending little Veronica away.

And yet it was the kindest thing they could have done for her. Veronica
was happy in Dresden, living with a German family and studying music and
the language. She had no idea that music and the language were mere
blinds, and that she had been sent to the German family to keep her out
of Nicky's way.

They would have them all back again at Christmas. Frances counted the
days. From to-night, the seventh of June, to December the twentieth was
not much more than six months.

To-night, the seventh of June, was Nicky's wedding-night. But they did
not know that. Nicky had kept the knowledge from them, in his mercy, to
save them the agony of deciding whether they would recognize the
marriage or not. And as neither Frances nor Anthony had ever faced
squarely the prospect of disaster to their children, they had turned
their backs on Nicky's marriage and supported each other in the hope
that at the last minute something would happen to prevent it.

* * * * *

The ten o'clock post, and two letters from Germany. Not from Michael,
not from Veronica. One from Frau Schaefer, the mother of the German
family. It was all in German, and neither Anthony nor Frances could make
out more than a word here and there. "Das suesse, liebe Maedchen" meant