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As they left the house they met Frau Lichtenfeld and the bushy Herr Schotte–the professor cut an astonishing figure in golf stockings–returning from a walk and engaged in an animated conversation on the tendencies of German fiction.

“Aren’t they the most attractive little children,” exclaimed Imogen as they wound down the road toward the river.

“Yes, and you must not fail to tell Flavia that you think so. She will look at you in a sort of startled way and say, ‘Yes, aren’t they?’ and maybe she will go off and hunt them up and have tea with them, to fully appreciate them. She is awfully afraid of missing anything good, is Flavia. The way those youngsters manage to conceal their guilty presence in the House of Song is a wonder.”

“But don’t any of the artist-folk fancy children?” asked Imogen.

“Yes, they just fancy them and no more. The chemist remarked the other day that children are like certain salts which need not be actualized because the formulae are quite sufficient for practical purposes. I don’t see how even Flavia can endure to have that man about.”

“I have always been rather curious to know what Arthur thinks of it all,” remarked Imogen cautiously.

“Thinks of it!” ejaculated Miss Broadwood. “Why, my dear, what would any man think of having his house turned into an hotel, habited by freaks who discharge his servants, borrow his money, and insult his neighbors? This place is shunned like a lazaretto!”

Well, then, why does he–why does he–” persisted Imogen.

“Bah!” interrupted Miss Broadwood impatiently, “why did he in the first place? That’s the question.”

“Marry her, you mean?” said Imogen coloring.

“Exactly so,” said Miss Broadwood sharply, as she snapped the lid of her matchbox.

“I suppose that is a question rather beyond us, and certainly one which we cannot discuss,” said Imogen. “But his toleration on this one point puzzles me, quite apart from other complications.”

“Toleration? Why this point, as you call it, simply is Flavia. Who could conceive of her without it? I don’t know where it’s all going to end, I’m sure, and I’m equally sure that, if it were not for Arthur, I shouldn’t care,” declared Miss Broadwood, drawing her shoulders together.

“But will it end at all, now?”

“Such an absurd state of things can’t go on indefinitely. A man isn’t going to see his wife make a guy of herself forever, is he? Chaos has already begun in the servants’ quarters. There are six different languages spoken there now. You see, it’s all on an entirely false basis. Flavia hasn’t the slightest notion of what these people are really like, their good and their bad alike escape her. They, on the other hand, can’t imagine what she is driving at. Now, Arthur is worse off than either faction; he is not in the fairy story in that he sees these people exactly as they are,

but

he is utterly unable to see Flavia as they see her. There you have the situation. Why can’t he see her as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o’ nights. This man who has thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, really takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am entering upon a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing of the icy fastnesses of Flavia’s self- esteem. It’s like St. Peter’s; you can’t realize its magnitude at once. You have to grow into a sense of it by living under its shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, that merciless dissector of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because be saw at a glance what some of them do not perceive at once, and what will be mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds; namely, that all Flavia’s artists have done or ever will do means exactly as much to her as a symphony means to an oyster; that there is no bridge by which the significance of any work of art could be conveyed to her.”