uld be gradually pressed to the outskirts of the city. He felt
inclined to take the risk, even a sense of exhilaration in it, as if
indeed the dead and gone Otises had invaded his soul and demanded one
more bout on earth.

There was another matter that claimed his thoughts when the law was at
rest. He was suspicious and resentful of Isabel's desire to manage him;
and that she had succeeded more than once, through her superior feminine
subtlety, made him aware that two strong natures were slowly bracing
themselves against each other, and that on some future battle-ground
there might be a heavy and final encounter. This morning, as he ordered
his portmanteau to be packed and placed in the buggy, his impulse was to
take the tram, and cavalierly announce, upon their next meeting, that he
had "been to town." After he had had his coffee, however, he decided not
to be an ass, and unpardonably rude as well. She had talked of this
visit every time they had met, although one thing and another had
detained her, and he could hardly explain to her an impetuous and
solitary flight. He colored as he invoked her assumption that he feared
and was running away from her, asserting his independence like any
school-boy. Besides there was the launch. The idea of three hours on the
water instead of one and a half on a slow and dirty train so exhilarated
him that he forgot his self-communings and ordered the buggy at once. It
was but half-past five. They would catch the tide; nor did the train
leave until half-past eight. He presented Imura Kisaburo Hinamoto with a
box of cigarettes, gave him the run of the library, and drove off
whistling.

He found Isabel among the chickens. She had just opened the doors of all
the little colony houses, and the hills were white with excited
scratching Leghorns. She wore overalls and high boots, and the night
braid of her hair was twisted several times round her throat. Gwynne
smiled as he recalled the heroines of poesy that had fed so many doves
and garden birds. No heroine could look picturesque in bloomers, and
feeding chickens, but as Isabel came towards him waving her hand
hospitably, her white clear-cut face resting on its black _goita_ of
hair might have suggested Stuck's Suende, in the Neue Pinakothek of
Munich, had there been an evil glint in her light cool blue eyes. The
fleeting query crossed his mind as to what she might have been if born
in one of the generations before the pioneers of her sex h