e "elegance" to
his figure; his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his black
beard was no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were brushed away
from his lips in the same French style that she remembered he used to
affect. He was, as always, carefully dressed. He wore a suit of tweeds
of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of greenish plaid was
upon his head, his hands were gloved in dogskin, and under his arm he
carried a slender cane of varnished brown bamboo. The only
unconventionality in his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black
silk that overflowed the lapels of his coat.

But she had no more than time to register a swift impression of the
details, when he came quickly forward, one hand extended, the other
holding his cap.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed.

It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single
inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not
a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little
tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids,
or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the
trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, as
always, since first she had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at
the wrist.

"And so you are back again," she cried. "And when, and how?"

"And so--yes--so I am back again," he repeated, as they shook hands.
"Only day before yesterday, and quite surreptitiously. No one knows yet
that I am here. I crept in--or my train did--under the cover of night.
I have come straight from Tuscany."

"From Tuscany?"

"--and gardens and marble pergolas."

"Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and--and all that kind of
thing for a winter in Chicago, I cannot see," she said.

"It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy that my gardens
and pergolas and all the rest had come to seem to me a little--as the
French would put it--_malle._ I began to long for a touch of our hard,
harsh city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is only to
cut one's teeth on."

Laura looked down at him, smiling.

"I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she said.

"Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that I have come to that
time of life when it is expedient to have wisdom."

"I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and I live in the
'hard, harsh' city."

"Oh, that is because you have neve