w?

With these questions to be answered, as well as those she had already
put to herself concerning Mart, she could not enjoy the day's outing.
She rode through the parks with cold hands and white lips, and sat amid
the color and bustle and light of the dining-room with only spasmodic
return of her humorous, girlish self. The love which shone from Ben's
admiring eyes only added to her uneasiness.

She was very lovely in a new gown that disclosed her firm, rounded young
bosom, like a rosebud within its calyx--the distraction upon her brow
somehow adding to the charm of her face--and Ben thought her the most
wonderful girl he had ever known, so outwardly at ease and in command
was she. "Could any one," he thought, "be more swiftly adaptable?"

They went to the theatre, and her beauty and her curiously unsmiling
face aroused the admiration and curiosity of many others of those who
saw her. At last, under the influence of the music, her eyes lost their
shadow and grew tender and wistful. She ceased to question herself and
gave herself up to the joy of the moment. The play and the
melody--hackneyed to many of those present--appealed to her imagination,
liberating her from the earth and all its concerns. She turned to Ben
with eyes of rapture, saying, "Isn't it lovely!"

And he, to whom the music was outworn and a little shoddy, instantly
agreed. "Yes, it is very beautiful," and he meant it, for her pleasure
in it brought back a knowledge of the charm it had once possessed.

They dined together at the hotel, but the thought of Ben's departure
brought a pang into Bertha's heart, and she fell back into her uneasy,
distracted musing. She was being tempted, through her husband, who
repeated with the half-forgetfulness of age and weakness, "You'd better
go back with Mr. Fordyce, Bertie," but there was something stronger than
her individual will in her reply--some racial resolution which came down
the line of her good ancestry, and with almost angry outcry she
answered:

"There's no use talking that! I'm going with you," and with this she
ended the outward siege, but the inward battle was not closed till she
had taken and dropped the hand her lover held out in parting next
morning, and even then she turned away, with his eyes and the tender
cadences of his voice imprinted so vividly on her memory that she could
not banish them, and she set face towards the farther East with the
contest of duty and desire still going forward i