ft hand, and
legs and brain to the student of meteorology. There had evidently
been some tacit division of labor, by which she did all the
thinking and all the work while he did the talking. Thus, to
continue Durant's line of argument, the Colonel's comfort was
secured to him without an effort on his part (otherwise it would not
have been comfort); and when all was said and done Mrs. Fazakerly
was a most indifferent player of whist.

Then there was the Colonel's age. Durant knew a man who had taught
himself the 'cello at fifty-five. But the Colonel was not that sort
of adventurous dilettante. Neither was Mrs. Fazakerly exactly like a
violoncello, she was more like a piano; while Miss Tancred, from the
Colonel's point of view, was like a hurdy-gurdy. Not a difficult
instrument the hurdy-gurdy; you have only to keep on turning a
handle to make it go. To be sure, you can get rather more out of a
piano; but pianos are passionate things, ungovernable and slippery
to the touch. The Colonel was fond of the humbler instrument that
gave him the sense of accomplishment without the effort, the joys of
the _maestro_ without his labor and his pain.

He was in a double dilemma. If he had to choose between Miss Tancred
and Mrs. Fazakerly his choice would never be made. On the other
hand, if he decided for both, his comfort would be more insecure
than ever. There would be jealousy to a dead certainty; in all mixed
households that was where the shoe pinched. To pursue that vulgar
figure, the Colonel's daughter was like a pair of old and easy shoes
made by a good maker, a maker on whom he could rely; a wife would be
like new boots ordered rashly from an unknown firm. They would be
his best pair, no doubt, but your best pair is generally the
tightest. He had some trying years before him; and well, a man does
not put on new boots for a long uphill scramble.

So the Colonel's breast was torn with internecine warfare, desire
battling with habit, and habit with desire. No wonder if in that
awful struggle the fate of one insignificant individual counted for
nothing. Frida Tancred never had counted.

Durant admitted that his imagination was apt to work in somewhat
violent colors, and that there might be a point of view from which
the Colonel would tone down into a very harmless and even pathetic
figure; for Mrs. Fazakerly he had no terrors. But there was the
girl. It was hard to say exactly what he had done to her. Apparently
he had taken