"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his day... And when he himself is so changed..."
Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity—an indulgent pity—was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have remembered so clearly how everything looked... The Sargent of Jim on the pony... Do you think he minded?"
"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did."
"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's done for Jim—and for Lita. He admires your father. He's often told me so."
"Yes."
"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay to dine."
"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after dinner."
"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!"
Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You don't?"
"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about that. I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here—that the experiment had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer ... apparently Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him ... but when I said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he drove off?"