lesome ills. She
loved beautiful things, but was not extravagant; and what interested
him and commanded his respect was that no urgings of his toward
prodigality, however subtly advanced, could affect her. She knew what
she wanted, spent carefully, bought tastefully, arrayed herself in ways
which appealed to him as the flowers did. His feeling for her became at
times so great that he wished, one might almost have said, to destroy
it--to appease the urge and allay the pull in himself, but it was
useless. The charm of her endured. His transports would leave her
refreshed apparently, prettier, more graceful than ever, it seemed to
him, putting back her ruffled hair with her hand, mouthing at herself
prettily in the glass, thinking of many remote delicious things at once.

"Do you remember that picture we saw in the art store the other day,
Algernon?" she would drawl, calling him by his second name, which she
had adopted for herself as being more suited to his moods when with her
and more pleasing to her. Cowperwood had protested, but she held to
it. "Do you remember that lovely blue of the old man's coat?" (It was
an "Adoration of the Magi.") "Wasn't that be-yoot-i-ful?"

She drawled so sweetly and fixed her mouth in such an odd way that he
was impelled to kiss her. "You clover blossom," he would say to her,
coming over and taking her by the arms. "You sprig of cherry bloom.
You Dresden china dream."

"Now, are you going to muss my hair, when I've just managed to fix it?"

The voice was the voice of careless, genial innocence--and the eyes.

"Yes, I am, minx."

"Yes, but you mustn't smother me, you know. Really, you know you
almost hurt me with your mouth. Aren't you going to be nice to me?"

"Yes, sweet. But I want to hurt you, too."

"Well, then, if you must."

But for all his transports the lure was still there. She was like a
butterfly, he thought, yellow and white or blue and gold, fluttering
over a hedge of wild rose.

In these intimacies it was that he came quickly to understand how much
she knew of social movements and tendencies, though she was just an
individual of the outer fringe. She caught at once a clear
understanding of his social point of view, his art ambition, his dreams
of something better for himself in every way. She seemed to see
clearly that he had not as yet realized himself, that Aileen was not
just the woman for him, though she might be one. She talked of her own
husban