ugh, for that matter, they were never to be anything except
hideous to him. Behind them, stray planks, bricks, refuse of plaster and
lath, shingles, straw, empty barrels, strips of twisted tin and broken
tiles were strewn everywhere over the dried and pitted gray mud where
once the suave lawn had lain like a green lake around those stately
islands, the two Amberson houses. And George's state of mind was
not improved by his present view of this repulsive area, nor by his
sensations when he kicked an uptilted shingle only to discover that
what uptilted it was a brickbat on the other side of it. After that, the
whole world seemed to be one solid conspiracy of malevolence.

In this temper he emerged from behind the house nearest to his own, and,
glancing toward the street, saw his mother standing with Eugene Morgan
upon the cement path that led to the front gate. She was bareheaded, and
Eugene held his hat and stick in his hand; evidently he had been calling
upon her, and she had come from the house with him, continuing their
conversation and delaying their parting.

They had paused in their slow walk from the front door to the gate, yet
still stood side by side, their shoulders almost touching, as though
neither Isabel nor Eugene quite realized that their feet had ceased to
bear them forward; and they were not looking at each other, but at
some indefinite point before them, as people do who consider together
thoughtfully and in harmony. The conversation was evidently serious; his
head was bent, and Isabel's lifted left hand rested against her
cheek; but all the significances of their thoughtful attitude denoted
companionableness and a shared understanding. Yet, a stranger, passing,
would not have thought them married: somewhere about Eugene, not quite
to be located, there was a romantic gravity; and Isabel, tall and
graceful, with high colour and absorbed eyes, was visibly no wife
walking down to the gate with her husband.

George stared at them. A hot dislike struck him at the sight of Eugene;
and a vague revulsion, like a strange, unpleasant taste in his mouth,
came over him as he looked at his mother: her manner was eloquent of so
much thought about her companion and of such reliance upon him. And the
picture the two thus made was a vivid one indeed, to George, whose angry
eyes, for some reason, fixed themselves most intently upon Isabel's
lifted hand, upon the white ruffle at her wrist, bordering the graceful
black s