"Yes, the Seraph."
"And me for a third."
I felt her trying to draw her hand away.
"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit—hard hit."
I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing erect—blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired—she was wonderfully like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.
"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.
"Why?"
"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean. I've known three in one generation and one in another."
I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if Elsie had had no sister Joyce.
The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an anæmic girl of twenty—a Miss Draper—with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.