She stood up and wandered across the room. Archer, remaining seated,
watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its
heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way
a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the
ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in
the delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently he
rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves
were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic
utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of
discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.

"It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters ... any
more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important
to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying
glass and labelled: 'Use unknown.'"

"Yes; but meanwhile--"

"Ah, meanwhile--"

As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a
small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the
tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring
with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure
harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.

"Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you," he said.

She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan. He sat
down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far
off down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.

"What is it you wanted to tell me?" she asked, as if she had received
the same warning.

"What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined. "Why, that I believe you
came to New York because you were afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Of my coming to Washington."

She looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands stir in it uneasily.

"Well--?"

"Well--yes," she said.

"You WERE afraid? You knew--?"

"Yes: I knew ..."

"Well, then?" he insisted.

"Well, then: this is better, isn't it?" she returned with a long
questioning sigh.

"Better--?"

"We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always
wanted?"

"To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach? To meet
you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want. I
told you the other day what I wanted."

She hesitated. "And you still think this--worse?"

"A