Beyond that period lay chaos, the wrenching asunder of Francesca
from the sheltering habitation that had grown to be her soul. It
is true that in imagination she had built herself a bridge across
the chasm, a bridge of a single span. The bridge in question was
her schoolboy son Comus, now being educated somewhere in the
southern counties, or rather one should say the bridge consisted of
the possibility of his eventual marriage with Emmeline, in which
case Francesca saw herself still reigning, a trifle squeezed and
incommoded perhaps, but still reigning in the house in Blue Street.
The Van der Meulen would still catch its requisite afternoon light
in its place of honour, the Fremiet and the Dresden and Old
Worcester would continue undisturbed in their accustomed niches.
Emmeline could have the Japanese snuggery, where Francesca
sometimes drank her after-dinner coffee, as a separate drawing-
room, where she could put her own things. The details of the
bridge structure had all been carefully thought out. Only--it was
an unfortunate circumstance that Comus should have been the span on
which everything balanced.

Francesca's husband had insisted on giving the boy that strange
Pagan name, and had not lived long enough to judge as to the
appropriateness, or otherwise, of its significance. In seventeen
years and some odd months Francesca had had ample opportunity for
forming an opinion concerning her son's characteristics. The
spirit of mirthfulness which one associates with the name certainly
ran riot in the boy, but it was a twisted wayward sort of mirth of
which Francesca herself could seldom see the humorous side. In her
brother Henry, who sat eating small cress sandwiches as solemnly as
though they had been ordained in some immemorial Book of
Observances, fate had been undisguisedly kind to her. He might so