noon
`` I 'll send it up to her room . '' But Doria with Adrian 's impeccability on the brain -- and how could a work of Adrian 's be impeccable when an alien hand , however imperceptible , had touched it ? -- was not satisfied . Towards noon , when she came downstairs , she met Jaffery on the terrace , with a familiar little knitting of the brow before which his welcoming smile faded . `` It 's all right up to a point , '' she said , handing him back the letter . `` Nobody with the rudiments of a brain could fail to recognise the merits of Adrian 's work . But no novelist is possessed of the critical faculty . ''