f her. She came to
the window seat and sat down. He looked round at that, and said: "Ah!"

It was a murmur almost of admiration, not usual from him, since, with
the exception of certain portions of the classics, it was hardly his
custom to admire. But she knew that she was looking her best sitting
there, her really beautiful figure poised, the sun shining on her brown
hair, and brightening her deep-set, ice-green eyes under their black
lashes. It was sometimes a great comfort to her that she remained so
good-looking. It would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt
that she ruffled her husband's fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones
were too high for his taste, symbols of that something in her character
which did not go with his--the dash of desperation, of vividness, that
lack of a certain English smoothness, which always annoyed him.

"Harold!"--she would never quite flatten her r's--"I want to go to the
mountains this year."

The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at San Martino di
Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her marrying him.

"Nostalgia!"

"I don't know what that means--I am homesick. Can we go?"

"If you like--why not? But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for ME!"

She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splendidly he had
led that day! She had almost worshipped him. What blindness! What
distortion! Was it really the same man standing there with those bright,
doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair? Yes, romance was over! And
she sat silent, looking out into the street--that little old street into
which she looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to the
door, and rang.

She said softly: "Here is Mark Lennan!"

She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he
had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still,
she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed
dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.

"Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh? Draw up;
let's get him over!"

Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two figures
at the table--the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass voice; her
husband leaning back with the tips of his fingers pressed together, his
head a little on one side, and that faint, satiric smile which never
reached his eyes. Yes, he was dozing, falling asleep; and the boy, not
seeing, wa