erished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her body to
dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the shell
of the shell.

She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the
invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope,
beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly approved of
Anne.

Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he
felt, of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy.

Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her,
as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured
spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little
while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The
flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave
to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into
vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its
temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched
them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had
acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman of
the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that, however
sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane pleasure in her
white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace scarf. She wore them
with an appearance of being dressed appropriately for a superb occasion.

The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with
inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the weak,
slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her all
beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt now to her brother
and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail, nervous
hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she remembered
Anne, and held her, too.

Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and vexation
could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of love that
looked at them out of Edith's eyes.

"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go and cut
it short like that? Was it just because of me?"

In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her
question; but Majendie rose to it.

"I say--the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne
agreed with me abou