th, the prodigious thoroughness of which they were
capable.

He said to himself, "The blood of these women is in their brains." That
was precisely what he had against them.

VIII

It was a perfect day, Jane's birthday, like a young June day, a day of
the sun, of white distances and vivid foregrounds.

Wendover Hill looked over Arnott Nicholson's white house and over his
green garden, where, summer and winter through, there brooded a heavenly
quiet, a perfect peace. It was strange and sad, said Tanqueray, that a
quiet and peace like that should be given to Nicky--to write poems in.
Jane said it was sadder and stranger that verse so vile should flow from
anything so charming, so perfect in its way as Nicky.

"Do you think," said she, as they crowded on his doorstep, "do you think
he'll be at home?"

"Rather. We shall find him in his library, among his books and his
busts, seething in a froth of abominable manuscripts, and feeling
himself immortal."

Arnott Nicholson was at home, and he was in his library, with his books
and his busts, and with Gisborne's great portrait of Jane Holland (the
original) above his chimney-piece. He was, as Tanqueray had predicted,
seething in his froth. Their names came to him there--Miss Holland and
Mr. Tanqueray. In a moment Nicky was out of his library and into his
drawing-room.

He was a singularly attractive person, slender, distinguished, highly
finished in black and white. He was dressed, not like a candidate for
immortality, but in the pink of contemporary perfection.

He was shyly, charmingly glad to see them. And delighted, of course, he
said, to see Miss Lempriere and Miss Gunning. He insisted on their all
staying to tea, to dinner, on their giving him, now that they had come,
a day. He ordered whisky and soda and lemonade. He brought peaches and
chocolates and cigarettes, and offered them diffidently, as things
mortal and savouring of mortality.

He went to and fro, carrying himself humbly yet with triumph, like one
aware that he entertained immortal guests. He couldn't get over it, he
said, their dropping in on him like this, with a divine precipitance,
out of their blue. Heavens! Supposing he had been out! He stood there
glowing at them, the most perfect thing in his perfect drawing-room.

It was a room of old chintzes and old china, of fragile, distinguished
furniture, of family portraits, of miniatures in medallions, and great
bowls of roses everywhere. Th