rected by her words, his eyes swept rapidly over the room.

"It's no use, Julia," he answered; "if you're New England to the core,
you can't get free of it. I'd like every drop of New England blood
drained out of me, and something--say Hebrew or--or Middle-West," he
laughed, "substituted in place of it. To you this is 'pretty' and 'cozy'
and--and 'cheerful'; to me--well, it's like an orgy of blue laws; it's
the personification of witch-lore--like self-inflicted penance for I
don't know what." He glanced at her in excitement, shifting his hands
uneasily in and out of his pockets.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I had thought, nevertheless, that you might
like it."

"Like it?" he echoed. "That's the trouble. I wish I weren't so full of
the meaning of it all. Can you fancy how a monk might feel, who'd been
away on a vacation, just getting back to his cell? _Like_ it? I can't
help liking it. It's my proper setting; I see that fast enough. But
I've come back to find how inexorable and harsh and catechismical it is,
and naturally I resent being what I am. Oh--" he broke off, suddenly
realizing the folly of his harangue, and after another moment he added:
"It's delightful, Julia dear, really. If only all the Westerners could
come to New England and revive it--and all the New-Englanders move West
and revive themselves!"

They went on from room to room.

"You Westerners," Hastings reiterated--"oh, I don't just know what the
difference is, for you're New England, too. Only you've got so much else
mixed up with it. You've become free-lances; your more recent, less
bigoted adventures have made you forget."

"What?" asked Julia, indignantly.

But he was at a loss, as he looked about him, to explain, however
much each new survey of the scene convinced him. "Here," he muttered,
"everything has been steeping so long in the attenuated resolutions
that drove us to come; everything is still conscientiously
soaked--saturated--in the barren memory of it."

"_You're_ not," said Julia, testily, to draw him out. "Precious little
of it _you've_ had! Two years at a school! You're more foreign than you
are New England. Remember--your--"

"Yes. I don't forget I've one foreign ancestor to boast of, and bless
Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry--see
this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his
other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to
you, is--well--it's as 'amus