embarrassments through paying his attentions to two reigning beauties
at once.' She was full of stories which began in that sort of pleasant
way."

I said: "When a person like that dies, an impoverishment falls upon us;
the texture of life seems thinner."

"Oh, yes, indeed! I know what you mean--to lose the people one has
always seen from the cradle. Well, she has gone away, she has taken
her memories out of the world, the old times, the old stories. Nobody,
except a little nutshell of people here, knows or cares anything about
her any more; and soon even the nutshell will be empty." He paused, and
then, as if brushing aside his churchyard mood, he translated into his
changed thought another classic quotation: "But we can't dawdle over
the 'tears of things'; it's Nature's law. Only, when I think of the
rice-banks and the boots and the pistol, I wonder if the Newport ladies,
for all their high-balls, could do any better!"

The crimson had faded, the twilight was altogether come, but the little
noiseless breeze was blowing still; and as we left the quiet tombs
behind us, and gained Worship Street, I could not help looking back
where slept that older Kings Port about which I had heard and had said
so much. Over the graves I saw the roses, nodding and moving, as if in
acquiescent revery.

VII: The Girl Behind the Counter--II

"Which of them is idealizing?" This was the question that I asked
myself, next morning, in my boarding-house, as I dressed for breakfast;
the next morning is--at least I have always found it so--an excellent
time for searching questions; and to-day I had waked up no longer
beneath the strong, gentle spell of the churchyard. A bright sun was
shining over the eastern waters of the town, I could see from my upper
veranda the thousand flashes of the waves; the steam yacht rode placidly
and competently among them, while a coastwise steamer was sailing by
her, out to sea, to Savannah, or New York; the general world was going
on, and--which of them was idealizing? It mightn't be so bad, after
all. Hadn't I, perhaps, over-sentimentalized to myself the case of John
Mayrant? Hadn't I imagined for him ever so much more anxiety than the
boy actually felt? For people can idealize down just as readily as
they can idealize up. Of Miss Hortense Rieppe I had now two partial
portraits--one by the displeased aunts, the other by their chivalric
nephew; in both she held between her experienced lips, a cigarette;