his reading-chair, beside which his books
and papers stood ready to his hand. Generally, nothing gave him a greater
sense of _bien-etre_ than this nightly return, after a day spent in
society, to these silent and faithful companions of his life. He was
accustomed to feel the atmosphere of his room when he came back to it
charged with welcome. It was as though the thoughts and schemes he had
left warm and safe in shelter there started to life again after a day's
torpor, and thronged to meet him. His books smiled at him with friendly
faces, the open page called to him to resume the work of the morning--he
was, in every sense, at home. Tonight, however, the familiar spell seemed
to have lost its force. After a hasty supper he took up some proofs, pen
in hand. But the first page was hardly turned before they had dropped on
to his knee. It seemed to him as if he still felt on his arm the folds of
a green, fur-edged cloak, as if the touch of a soft cold hand were still
lingering in his. Presently he fell to recalling every detail of the
afternoon scene,--the arching beech trees, the rich red and brown of the
earth beneath, tinged with the winter sheddings of the trees, the little
raised bank, her eyes as she looked up at him, the soft wisps of her
golden brown hair under her hat. What superb, unapproachable beauty it
was! how living, how rich in content and expression!

'Am I in love with Isabel Bretherton?' he asked himself at last, lying
back on his chair with his eyes on the portrait of his sister. 'Perhaps
Marie could tell me--I don't understand myself. I don't think so. And if
I were, I am not a youngster, and my life is a tolerably full one. I
could hold myself in and trample it down if it were best to do so. I can
hardly imagine myself absorbed in a great passion. My bachelor life is a
good many years old--my habits won't break up easily. And, supposing I
felt the beginnings of it, I could stop it if reason were against it.'

He left his chair, and began to pace up and down the room, thinking. 'And
there is absolutely no sort of reason in my letting myself fall in love
with Isabel Bretherton! She has never given me the smallest right to
think that she takes any more interest in me than she does in hundreds of
people whom she meets on friendly terms, unless it may be an intellectual
interest, as Wallace imagines, and that's a poor sort of stepping-stone
to love! And if it were ever possible that she should, this afternoo