tion of Justin's, which left the other
group out of the conversation, an exclusion of which George availed
himself with ardor.

There is an atmosphere in the presence of those who have lived through
large experiences which is hard to describe. As Girard sat there
talking to Justin in courteous ease, his elbow on the arm of his
chair, his chin leaning on the fingers of his hand, he had a
distinction possessed by no one else in the room. Even Justin, with
all his engaging personality, seemed somehow a little narrow, a little
provincial, by the side of Girard.

Lois, who had been going backward and forward from the
dining-room,--with black-eyed Redge, sturdy and turbulent, following
after her astride a stick, until the nurse was called to take him
away,--came and sat down quite naturally beside this new visitor as if
he had been an old friend, and was evidently interested and pleased.
As a matter of fact, though all women as a rule liked Girard at sight,
he much preferred the society of those who were married, when he went
in women's society at all. Girls gave him a strange inner feeling of
shyness, of deficiency--perhaps partly caused by the conscious
disadvantages of a youth other than that to which he had been born;
but it was a feeling that he would have been the last to be credited
with, and which he certainly need have been the last to possess. Like
many very attractive people, he had no satisfying sense of
attractiveness himself.

It was raining now, but very softly, after all the wild preparation,
with a hint of sunshine through the rain that sent a pale-green light
over the little drawing-room, with its spindle-legged furniture and
the water-colors on its walls, though the gloom of the dining-room
beyond was relieved only by the silver and the white napkins on the
round mahogany table with a glass bowl of green-stemmed, white-belled
lilies-of-the-valley in the center.

The people in the two separate groups in the drawing-room took on an
odd, pearly distinctness, with the flesh-tints subdued. In this
commonplace little gathering on a Sunday afternoon the material seemed
to be only a veil for the things of the spirit--subtle
cross-communications of thought-touch or repulsion, impressions
tinglingly felt. Something seemed to be curiously happening, though
one knew not what. To Dosia's swift observation, Girard had lost some
of the brightness that had shone upon her vision the night of the
ball; he looked as if