a door at the end of
the room. "Deux consommes, deux!" came the distant echo from the
kitchen.

Traill leant his elbow on the table and looked at her--let his eyes
rest on every feature, last of all her eyes, and held them.

"By not looking for it," he said. "By passing it one evening at about
the time for dinner, seeing the new-old bottle-panes in the leaded
windows, looking down these stairs and getting a rough-drawn
impression that the place was cosy, a rough-drawn impression in which
the bottle-panes suggested that they had some sort of ideas in their
heads, these people--and the little pots of evergreen down the stairs
with the ugly red frilled paper round them that made you think that
they had known the country--lived in it. All that blurred together
in a mazy idea that it was sure to be cosy. Then I came downstairs,
saw all these little tables with their vases of flowers, the spotless
serviettes sticking up like white horns out of the wine-glasses, saw
the beaming face of Berthe over there; was greeted with, 'Bon soir,
Monsieur;' and so I dined. That's a year and a half ago. I've had
my dinner, on an average, three times a week here ever since."

"It must be nice to be a man," said Sally.

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know; to dine where you like, find out these quaint
little places, never to have to think of the impression you give by
what you do."

He leaned back in his chair, and smiled at her. "We have to think
just as much as you do, in most of the things we really want to do.
I didn't want particularly to dine in such a place as this, that
evening I came here. It seemed no liberty to me. There are things
I might give the world to be able to do, yet haven't the liberty.
What do you want with liberty--the liberty to come and go wherever
you please?" He smiled at her again. "What good would it do you?"

Sally wondered what Miss Hallard would say if she were to hear this.
She wondered what she would have said herself, had the expression
of such ideas come from Mr. Arthur. There was no doubt that she would
have repudiated them with vehement denial. With Traill she said
nothing--felt that he was right. Why was that? She could not tell.
It was beyond her power to analyze the situation as closely as it
required. It was beyond her ability to realize that a man may say
he is the son of God, if it be that he has behind the words the power
of the personality of a Jesus Christ. Traill had the personality--the
dominanc