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 them. What in the world makes you have such a wild idea? About Elliott, I mean?"

"Oh, nothing."

"No, really, Boyd. He hasn't been near me all week."

"Doesn't that just prove what I'm telling you? He doesn't dare come. He's afraid to admit to himself the way he's feeling. But I saw him looking at you the other day."

"When did you?"

"Up in the studio the day you were all there for tea. You went over to the window and said something about the first star, and he sat looking at you as if he was bewitched, and then grabbed his hat and bolted. Don't you remember?"

Christabel remembered. She could see the scene as clearly as if she were sitting in the front row of a theatre. The firelight shining on Boyd's paintings of passionate petunias and eggplants of heroic size, Boyd with her short hair and manly clothes leaning against the mantelpiece, a cigarette hanging from the cor-