for salary--- There presented itself the thought of Uncle Felix and
the three elder boys. Instinctively he felt that Malvina would not
be Aunt Emily's idea. His father, had the dear old gentleman been
alive, would have been a safe refuge. They had always understood
one another, he and his father. But his mother! He was not at all
sure. He visualised the scene: the drawing-room at Chester
Terrace. His mother's soft, rustling entrance. Her affectionate
but well-bred greeting. And then the disconcerting silence with
which she would await his explanation of Malvina. The fact that she
was a fairy he would probably omit to mention. Faced by his
mother's gold-rimmed pince-nez, he did not see himself insisting
upon that detail: "A young lady I happened to find asleep on a moor
in Brittany. And seeing it was a fine night, and there being just
room in the machine. And she--I mean I--well, here we are." There
would follow such a painful silence, and then the raising of the
delicately arched eyebrows: "You mean, my dear lad, that you have
allowed this"--there would be a slight hesitation here--"this young
person to leave her home, her people, her friends and relations in
Brittany, in order to attach herself to you. May I ask in what
capacity?"

For that was precisely how it would look, and not only to his
mother. Suppose by a miracle it really represented the facts.
Suppose that, in spite of the overwhelming evidence in her
favour--of the night and the moon and the stars, and the feeling
that had come to him from the moment he had kissed her--suppose
that, in spite of all this, it turned out that she wasn't a fairy.
Suppose that suggestion of vulgar Common Sense, that she was just a
little minx that had run away from home, had really hit the mark.
Suppose inquiries were already on foot. A hundred horse-power