es.

"Dear old Dick!" she said, "how happy you must be!"

Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
indifferent--beamed from her.

"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at
the station."

"Cheer up!" replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully depressed.

That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
flavour.

"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.

"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right, really.
Cheer up!" She stretched her little figure, canting her head still more.

"Wonderful woman!" Shelton thought. She had, in fact, like many of her
fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and, enjoying
the benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept as young in
heart as any girl of thirty.

Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as when
he entered it. He spent a restless afternoon.

The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday. He had made Ferrand a
promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching
at any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it. The
preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an original
method of distributing the funds that he obtained. To male sheep he gave
nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep
the rest. Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner. The
Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely
abstract love of beauty. His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable,
and Shelton came out feeling sick.

It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to kill
the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of wine for
his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a cigarette,
compressed his lips. There was a strange, sweet sinking in his heart.
His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his wine, crumbled his
roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils, glancing caustically at
the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors, the hot, red velvet, the
chandeliers. His juicy lips seemed to be murmuring, "Ah! if you only
knew of the dirt behind these feathers!" Shelton watched him with
disgust. Though his clothes were now so nice, his nails were not quite
clean, and his fingertips seemed yellow to the bone. An anaemic waiter
in a s