late in the evening a measure of it was restored when Nina and Leslie
effected a reconciliation. It followed several bad hours when Nina
had locked her door against them all, but at ten o'clock she sent for
Leslie and faced him with desperate calmness.

To Elizabeth, putting cold cloths on her mother's head as she lay
on the bed, there came a growing conviction that the relation
between men and women was a complicated and baffling thing, and
that love and hate were sometimes close together.

Love, and habit perhaps, triumphed in Nina's case, however, for at
eleven o'clock they heard Leslie going down the stairs and later
on moving about the kitchen and pantry while whistling softly. The
servants had gone, and the air was filled with the odor of burning
bread. Some time later Mrs. Wheeler, waiting uneasily in the upper
hall, beheld her son-in-law coming up and carrying proudly a tray
on which was toast of an incredible blackness, and a pot which
smelled feebly of tea.

"The next time you're out of a cook just send for me," he said
cheerfully.

Mrs. Wheeler, full and overflowing with indignation and the piece
of her mind she had meant to deliver, retired vanquished to her
bedroom.

Late that night when Nina had finally forgiven him and had settled
down for sleep, Leslie went downstairs for a cigar, to find Elizabeth
sitting there alone, a book on her knee, face down, and her eyes
wistful and with a question in them.