womanish mouth, which
was as in the old time very full and red and sensitive. And,
illogically enough, both this great change in him and this one feature
that had never changed annoyed her equally.

She was also worried by his odd tone of flippancy. It jarred, it
vaguely--for the phrase has no equivalent--"rubbed her the wrong way."
Here at a martyr's tomb it was hideously out-of-place, and yet she did
not see her way clear to rebuke. So she remained silent.

But Rudolph Musgrave was uncanny in some respects. For he said within
the moment, "I am not a bit like John Charteris, am I?"

"No," she answered, quietly. It had been her actual thought.

Anne stayed a tiny while quite motionless. Her eyes saw nothing
physical. It was the attitude, Colonel Musgrave reflected, of one who
listens to a far-off music and, incommunicably, you knew that the music
was of a martial sort. She was all in black, of course, very slim and
pure and beautiful. The great cluster of red roses, loosely held, was
like blood against the somber gown.

The widow of John Charteris, in fine, was a very different person from
that Anne Willoughby whom Rudolph Musgrave had loved so long and long
ago. This woman had tasted of tonic sorrows unknown to Rudolph Musgrave,
and had got consolation too, somehow, in far half-credible uplands
unvisited by him. But, he knew, she lived, and was so exquisite, mainly
by virtue of that delusion which he, of all men, had preserved; Anne
Charteris was of his creation, his masterpiece; and viewing her, he was
aware of great reverence and joy.

Anne was happy. It was for that he had played.

But aloud, "I am envious," Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single
solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his
relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman
John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven
years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world
should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that
you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his
relict. And he has been dead now all of three whole years! So I am
envious, just as we ordinary mortals can't help being of you both;
and--may I say it?--I am glad."

IV

They were standing thus when a boy of ten or eleven came unhurriedly
into the "section." He assumed possession of Colonel Musgrave's hand as
though the action were a