ne's residence beneath his roof,
none perplexed him more than her detachment. Moreover, it was a
detachment as difficult to comprehend in quality as to define in words.
There was in her attitude nothing of the retreating nymph or of the
self-effacing sufferer. She took her place equally without obtrusiveness
and without affectation. Such effects as she brought about came without
noise, without effort, and without laboriousness of good intention.
Simple and straightforward in all her ways, she nevertheless contrived
to throw into her relations with himself an element as impersonal as
sunshine.

In the first days of her coming it was he who, in pursuance of his
method of reserve, had held aloof. He had been frequently absent from
New York, and, even when there, had lived much at one or another of his
clubs. Weeks had already passed when the perception stole on him that
his goings and comings meant little more to her than to the trees waving
in the great Park before his door.

The discovery that he had been taking such pains to abstract himself
from eyes which scarcely noticed whether he was there or not brought
with it a little bitter raillery at his own expense. He was piqued at
once in his self-love and in his masculine instinct for domination. It
seemed to be out of the natural order of things that his thoughts should
dwell so much on a woman to whom he was only a detail in the scheme of
her surroundings--superior to the butler, and more animate than the
pictures on the wall, but as little in her consciousness as either. It
was certainly an easy opportunity in which to display that
self-restraint which he had undertaken to make his portion; but when the
heroic nature finds no obstacles to overcome, it has a tendency to
create them.

Without obtruding himself upon Diane, Derek began to dine more
frequently at his own house. On those occasions when Dorothea went out
alone it was impossible for the two who remained at home to avoid a kind
of conversation, which, with the topics incidental to the management of
a common household, often verged upon the intimate. When Diane
accompanied his daughter to the opera, he adopted the habit of dropping
into the box, and perhaps taking them, with some of Dorothea's friends,
to a restaurant for supper. He planned the little parties and excursions
for which Dorothea's "budding" offered an excuse; and, while he
recognized the subterfuge, he made his probable journey, with the long
a