"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

He had risen as she rose and went to open the door for her. He escorted
her through the smoke-room and stood there at the further door, holding
out his hand, benignant and superbly solemn.

"Good night, then," he said.

She told herself that she was wrong, quite wrong about his poor old
face. There was nothing in it, nothing but that grave and unadventurous
benignity. His mood had been, she judged, purely paternal. Paternal and
childlike, too; pathetic, if you came to think of it, in his clinging to
her presence, her companionship. "It must have been my little evil
mind," she thought.


3

As she went along the corridor she remembered she had left her knitting
in the drawing-room. She turned to fetch it and found Fanny still there,
wide awake with her feet on the fender, and reading "Tono-Bungay."

"Oh, Mrs. Waddington, I thought you'd gone to bed."

"So did I, dear. But I changed my mind when I found myself alone with
Wells. He's too heavenly for words."