t would have been about the same wherever he
lived."

"Who is satisfied with the verdict now?" triumphed Marise.

But she noticed that Marsh's attack, although she considered that she
had refuted it rather neatly, had been entirely; efficacious in
destroying the aura of the evening. Of the genuine warmth of feeling
which the flower and the people around it had roused in her heart, not
the faintest trace was left. She had only a cool interested certainty
that her side had a perfectly valid foundation for arguing purposes. Mr.
Marsh had accomplished that, and more than that, a return from those
other centers of feeling to her preoccupation with his own personality.

He now went on, "But I'm glad to have gone. I saw a great deal else
there than your eccentric plant and the vacancy of mind of those sons of
toil, cursed, soul-destroying toil. For one thing, I saw a woman of
very great beauty. And that is always so much gained."

"Oh yes," cried Marise, "that's so. I forgot that you could see that.
I've grown so used to the fact that people here don't understand how
splendidly handsome Nelly Powers is. Their taste doesn't run to the
statuesque, you know. They call that grand silent calm of her,
stupidness! Ever since 'Gene brought her here as a bride, a year after
we came to live in Crittenden's, I have gone out of my way to look at
her. You should see her hanging out the clothes on a windy day. One
sculptured massive pose after another. But even to see her walk across
the room and bend that shining head is thrilling."

"I saw something else, too," went on Marsh, a cool voice speaking out of
the darkness. "I saw that her black, dour husband is furiously in love
with her and furiously jealous of that tall, ruddy fellow with an
expressive face, who stood by the door in shirt-sleeves and never took
his eyes from her."

Marise was silent, startled by this shouting out of something she had
preferred not to formulate.

"Vincent, you see too much," said Mr. Welles resignedly. The phrase ran
from his tongue as though it were a familiar one.

Marise said slowly, "I've sometimes thought that Frank Warner did go to
the Powers' a good deal, but I haven't wanted to think anything more."

"What possible reason in the world have you for not wanting to?" asked
Marsh with the most authentic accent of vivid and astonished curiosity.

"What reason . . . ?" she repeated blankly.

He said dispassionately, "I don't like to hear _you_ m