“No,” he said.  “Don’t draw away from me.  You have always been too ready to do that.  It is not often I have a pleasant truth to tell.  I won’t be deprived of the enjoyment.”

“Can the truth ever be pleasant, sir?” Involuntarily Loder echoed Chilcote.

Fraide looked up.  He was half a head shorter than his companion, though his dignity concealed the fact.  “Chilcote,” he said, seriously, “give up cynicism!  It is the trade-mark of failure, and I do not like it in my friends.”

Loder said nothing.  The quiet insight of the reproof, its mitigating kindness, touched him sharply.  In that moment he saw the rails down which he had sent his little car of existence spinning, and the sight daunted him.  The track was steeper, the gauge narrower, than he had guessed; there were curves and sidings upon which he had not reckoned.  He turned his head and met Fraide’s glance.

“Don’t count too much on me, sir,” he said, slowly.  “I might disappoint you again.”  His voice broke off on the last word, for the sound of other voices and of laughter came to them across the Terrace as a group of two women and three men passed through the open door.  At a glance he realized that the slighter of the two women was Eve.

Seeing them, she disengaged herself from her party and came quickly forward.  He saw her cheeks flush and her eyes brighten pleasantly as they rested on his companion; but he noticed also that after her first cursory glance she avoided his own direction.

As she came towards them, Fraide drew away his hand in readiness to greet her.

“Here comes my godchild!” he said.  “I often wish, Chilcote, that I could do away with the prefix.”  He added the last words in an undertone as he reached them; then he responded warmly to her smile.

“What!” he said.  “Turning the Terrace into the Garden of Eden in January!  We cannot allow this.”

Eve laughed.  “Blame Lady Sarah!” she said.  “We met at lunch, and she carried me off.  Needless to say I hadn’t to ask where.”

They both laughed, and Loder joined, a little uncertainly.  He had yet to learn that the devotion of Fraide and his wife was a long-standing jest in their particular set.

At the sound of his tardy laugh Eve turned to him.  “I hope I didn’t rob you of all sleep last night,” she said.  “I caught him in his den,” she explained, turning to Fraide, “and invaded it most courageously.  I believe we talked till two.”

Again Loder noticed bow quickly she looked from him to Fraide.  The knowledge roused his self-assertion.

“I had an excellent night,” he said.  “Do I look as if I hadn’t slept?”

Somewhat slowly and reluctantly Eve looked back.  “No,” she said, truthfully, and with a faint surprise that to Loder seemed the first genuine emotion she had shown regarding him.  “No, I don’t think I ever saw you look so well.”  She was quite unconscious and very charming as she made the admission.  It struck Loder that her coloring of hair and eyes gained by daylight—­were brightened and vivified by their setting of sombre river and sombre stone.