he said he had his business to
attend to, she replied: "Oh, a plague on your business! I am sick of
that word--one hears of nothing else in America. There are ways of
getting on without business, if you would only take them!" He seldom
answered her notes, and he disliked extremely the way in which, in spite
of her love of form and order, she attempted to clamber in at the window
of one's house when one had locked the door; so that he began to
interspace his visits considerably, and at last made them very rare.
When I reflect on his habits of almost superstitious politeness to
women, it comes over me that some very strong motive must have operated
to make him give his friendly--his only too friendly--cousin the cold
shoulder. Nevertheless, when he received her reproachful letter (after
it had had time to work a little), he said to himself that he had
perhaps been unjust and even brutal, and as he was easily touched by
remorse of this kind, he took up the broken thread.

XXII

As he sat with Mrs. Luna, in her little back drawing-room, under the
lamp, he felt rather more tolerant than before of the pressure she could
not help putting upon him. Several months had elapsed, and he was no
nearer to the sort of success he had hoped for. It stole over him gently
that there was another sort, pretty visibly open to him, not so elevated
nor so manly, it is true, but on which he should after all, perhaps, be
able to reconcile it with his honour to fall back. Mrs. Luna had had an
inspiration; for once in her life she had held her tongue. She had not
made him a scene, there had been no question of an explanation; she had
received him as if he had been there the day before, with the addition
of a spice of mysterious melancholy. She might have made up her mind
that she had lost him as what she had hoped, but that it was better than
desolation to try and keep him as a friend. It was as if she wished him
to see now how she tried. She was subdued and consolatory, she waited
upon him, moved away a screen that intercepted the fire, remarked that
he looked very tired, and rang for some tea. She made no inquiry about
his affairs, never asked if he had been busy and prosperous; and this
reticence struck him as unexpectedly delicate and discreet; it was as if
she had guessed, by a subtle feminine faculty, that his professional
career was nothing to boast of. There was a simplicity in him which
permitted him to wonder whether she had not