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Shortly after my lunch with Stephen Glenn I was unexpectedly detached from my job in Paris and sent on a special mission to the other side of the world. I was sorry to bid goodbye to Mrs. Glenn, but relieved to be rid of the thankless task of acting as her counsellor. Not that she herself was not thankful, poor soul; but the situation abounded in problems, to not one of which could I find a solution; and I was embarrassed by her simple faith in my ability to do so. “Get rid of the Browns; pension them off,” I could only repeat; but since my talk with Stephen I had little hope of his mother’s acting on this suggestion. “You’ll probably all end up together at St. Moritz,” I prophesied; and a few months later a belated Paris Herald, overtaking me in my remote corner of the globe, informed me that among the guests of the new Ice Palace Hotel at St. Moritz were Mrs. Glenn of New York, Mr. Stephen Glenn, and Mr. and Mrs. Boydon Brown. From succeeding numbers of the same sheet I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Boydon Brown were among those entertaining on the opening night of the new Restaurant des Glaciers, that the Boydon Brown cup for the most original costume at the Annual Fancy Ball of the Skiers’ Club had been won by Miss Thora Dacy (costume designed by the well-known artist, Stephen Glenn), and that Mr. Boydon Brown had been one of the stewards of the dinner given to the participants in the ice-hockey match between the St. Moritz and Suvretta teams. And on such items I was obliged to nourish my memory of my friends, for no direct news came to me from any of them.

When I bade Mrs. Glenn goodbye I had told her that I had hopes of a post in the State Department at the close of my temporary mission, and she said, a little wistfully: “How wonderful if we could meet next year in America! As soon as Stephen is strong enough I want him to come back and live with me in his father’s house.” This seemed a natural wish; and it struck me that it might also be the means of effecting a break with the Browns. But Mrs. Glenn shook her head. “Chrissy says a winter in New York would amuse them both tremendously.”

I was not so sure that it would amuse Stephen, and therefore did not base much hope on the plan. The one thing Stephen wanted was to get back to Paris and paint: it would presumably be his mother’s lot to settle down there when his health permitted.

I heard nothing more until I got back to Washington the following spring; then I had a line from Stephen. The winter in the Engadine had been a deadly bore, but had really done him good, and his mother was just leaving for Paris to look for an apartment. She meant to take one on a long lease, and have the furniture of the New York house sent out—it would be jolly getting it arranged. As for him, the doctors said he was well enough to go on with his painting, and, as I knew, it was the one thing he cared for; so I might cast off all anxiety about the family. That was all—and perhaps I should have obeyed if Mrs. Glenn had also written. But no word, no message even, came from her; and as she always wrote when there was good news to give, her silence troubled me.

It was in the course of the same summer, during a visit to Bar Harbour, that one evening, dining with a friend, I found myself next to a slight pale girl with large gray eyes, who suddenly turned them on me reproachfully. “Then you don’t know me? I’m Thora.”

I looked my perplexity, and she added: “Aren’t you Steve Glenn’s great friend? He’s always talking of you.” My memory struggled with a tangle of oddments, from which I finally extricated the phrase in the Herald about Miss Thora Dacy and the fancy-dress ball at St. Moritz. “You’re the young lady who won the Boydon Brown prize in a costume designed by the well-known artist, Mr. Stephen Glenn!”

Her charming face fell. “If you know me only through that newspaper rubbish ... I had an idea the well-known artist might have told you about me.”

“He’s not much of a correspondent.”

“No; but I thought—”

“Why won’t you tell me yourself instead?”

Dinner was over, and the company had moved out to a wide, starlit verandah looking seaward. I found a corner for two, and installed myself there with my new friend, who was also Stephen’s. “I like him awfully—don’t you?” she began at once. I liked her way of saying it; I liked her direct gaze; I found myself thinking: “But this may turn out to be the solution!” For I felt sure that, if circumstances ever gave her the right to take part in the coming struggle over Stephen, Thora Dacy would be on the side of the angels.

As if she had guessed my thought she continued: “And I do love Mrs. Glenn too—don’t you?”

I assured her that I did, and she added: “And Steve loves her—I’m sure he does!”

“Well, if he didn’t—!” I exclaimed indignantly.

“That’s the way I feel; he ought to. Only, you see, Mrs. Brown—the Browns adopted him when he was a baby, didn’t they, and brought him up as if he’d been their own child? I suppose they must know him better than any of us do; and Mrs. Brown says he can’t help feeling bitter about—I don’t know all the circumstances, but his mother did desert him soon after he was born, didn’t she? And if it hadn’t been for the Browns—”

“The Browns—the Browns! It’s a pity they don’t leave it to other people to proclaim their merits! And I don’t believe Stephen does feel as they’d like you to think. If he does, he ought to be kicked. If—if complicated family reasons obliged Mrs. Glenn to separate herself from him when he was a baby, the way she mourned for him all those years, and her devotion since they’ve come together again, have atoned a thousandfold for that old unhappiness; and no one knows it better than Stephen.”

The girl received this without protesting. “I’m so glad—so glad.” There was a new vibration in her voice; she looked up gravely. “I’ve always wanted to love Mrs. Glenn the best.”

“Well, you’d better; especially if you love Stephen.”

“Oh, I do love him,” she said simply. “But of course I understand his feeling as he does about the Browns.”

I hesitated, not knowing how I ought to answer the question I detected under this; but at length I said: “Stephen, at any rate, must feel that Mrs. Brown has no business to insinuate anything against his mother. He ought to put a stop to that.” She met the suggestion with a sigh, and stood up to join another group. “Thora Dacy may yet save us!” I thought, as my gaze followed her light figure across the room.

I had half a mind to write of that meeting to Stephen or to his mother; but the weeks passed while I procrastinated, and one day I received a note from Stephen. He wrote (with many messages from Mrs. Glenn) to give me their new address, and to tell me that he was hard at work at his painting, and doing a “promising portrait of mother Kit.” He signed himself my affectionate Steve, and added underneath: “So glad you’ve come across little Thora. She took a most tremendous shine to you. Do please be nice to her; she’s a dear child. But don’t encourage any illusions about me, please; marrying’s not in my programme.” “So that’s that,” I thought, and tore the letter up rather impatiently. I wondered if Thora Dacy already knew that her illusions were not to be encouraged.