Here they were, and here they would always be, their own small circle, carefully guarded.  They belonged together, they and the men who likewise belonged.  Now and then there would be changes.  A new man, of irreproachable family connections would come to live in the city, and cause a small flurry.  Then in time he would be appropriated.  Or a girl would come to visit, and by the same system of appropriation would come back later, permanently.  Always the same faces, the same small talk.  Orchids or violets at luncheons, white or rose or blue or yellow frocks at dinners and dances.  Golf at the country club.  Travel, in the Cardew private car, cut off from fellow travelers who might prove interesting.  Winter at Palm Beach, and a bit of a thrill at seeing moving picture stars and theatrical celebrities playing on the sand.  One never had a chance to meet them.

And, in quiet intervals, this still house, and grandfather shut away in his upstairs room, but holding the threads of all their lives as a spider clutches the diverging filaments of its web.

“Get in on this, Lily,” said a clear young voice.  “We’re talking about the most interesting men we met in our war work.  You ought to have known a lot of them.”

“I knew a lot of men.  They were not so very interesting.  There was a little nurse—­”

“Men, Lily dear.”

“There was one awfully nice boy.  He wasn’t a soldier, but he was very kind to the men.  They adored him.”

“Did he fall in love with your?”

“Not a particle.”

“Why wasn’t he a soldier?”

“He is a little bit lame.  But he is awfully nice.”

“But what is extraordinary about him, then?”

“Not a thing, except his niceness.”

But they were surfeited with nice young men.  They wanted something dramatic, and Willy Cameron was essentially undramatic.  Besides, it was quite plain that, with unconscious cruelty, his physical handicap made him unacceptable to them.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lily.  You’re hiding some one behind this kind person.  You must have met somebody worth while.”

“Not in the camp.  I know a perfectly nice Socialist, but he was not in the army.  Not a Socialist, really.  Much worse.  He believes in having a revolution.”

That stirred them somewhat.  She saw their interested faces turned toward her.

“With a bomb under his coat, of course, Lily.”

“He didn’t bulge.”

“Good-looking?”

“Well, rather.”

“How old is he, Lily?” one of them asked, suspiciously.

“Almost fifty, I should say.”

“Good heavens!”

Their interest died.  She could have revived it, she knew, if she mentioned Louis Akers; he would have answered to their prime requisite in an interesting man.  He was both handsome and young.  But she felt curiously disinclined to mention him.