“Manners are merely an external,” protested Penelope, although privately she acknowledged to a sneaking agreement with Nan’s point of view.

“Well,” retorted Nan.  “We’ve got to live with externals, haven’t we?  It’s only on rare occasions that people admit each other on to their souls’ doorsteps.  Besides”—­argumentatively—­“decent manners aren’t an external.  They’re the ‘outward and visible sign.’  Why”—­waxing enthusiastic—­“if a man just opens a door or puts some coal on the fire for you, it involves a whole history of the homage and protective instinct of man for woman.”

“The theory may be correct,” admitted Penelope, “though a trifle idealistic for the twentieth century.  Most men,” she added drily, “Regard coaling up the fire as a damned nuisance rather than a ’history of homage.’”

“It oughtn’t to be idealistic.”  There was a faint note of wistfulness in Nan’s voice.  “Why should everything that is beautiful be invariably termed ‘idealistic’?  Oh, there are ten thousand things I’d like altered in this world of ours!”

“Of course there are.  You wouldn’t be you otherwise!  You want a specially constructed world and a peculiarly adapted human nature.  In fact—­you want the moon!”

Nan stared into the fire reflectively.

“I wonder,” she said slowly, “if I shall get it?”

Penelope glanced at her sharply.

“It’s highly improbable,” she said.  “But a little philosophy would be quite as useful—­and a far more likely acquisition.”

As she finished speaking a bell pealed through the flat—­pealed with an irritable suggestion that it had been rung unavailingly before.  Followed the abigail’s footstep as she pursued her unhurried way to answer its imperative demand, and presently a visitor was shown into the room.  He was a man of over seventy, erect and well-preserved, with white hair and clipped moustache.  There was an indefinable courtliness of manner about him which recalled the days of lace ruffles and knee-breeches.  The two girls rose to greet him with unfeigned delight.

“Uncle!” cried Nan.  “How dear of you to come just when our spirits were at their lowest ebb!”

“My dears!” He kissed his niece and shook hands with Penelope.  Nan pushed an armchair towards the fire and tendered her cigarette case.

“You needn’t be afraid of them, Uncle David,” she informed him reassuringly.  “They’re not gaspers.”

“Sybarite!  With the same confidence as if they were my own.”  And Lord St. John helped himself smilingly.

“And why,” he continued, “has the barometer fallen?”

Nan laughed.

“You can’t expect it to be always ’set fair’!”

“I’d like it to be,” returned St. John simply.

A fugitive thought flashed through Nan’s mind that he and Peter Mallory were merely young and old representatives of a similar type of man.  She could imagine Mallory growing into the same gracious old manhood as her uncle.