s Goucher, perhaps too eagerly, took this for assent. "Shall I say to
Mrs. Hunt that you are coming down?"

I forced a smile, fatuously enough, and rose.

"When I'm down already? Surely you can see, Miss Goucher, that I've
touched the bottom?" Miss Goucher did not reply. "I'll go myself at
once," I added formally. "Thank you, Miss Goucher."

Gertrude was waiting in the small Georgian reception room, whose
detailed correctness had been due to her own; waiting without any vulgar
pretense at entire composure. She was walking slowly about, her color
was high, and it startled me to find her so little altered. Not a day
seemed to have added itself; she looked under thirty, though I knew her
to be thirty-five; she was even handsomer than I had chosen to remember.
Even in her present unusual restlessness, the old distinction, the old
patrician authority was hers. Her spirit imposed itself, as always; one
could take Gertrude only as she wished to be taken--seriously--humbly
grateful if exempted from disdain. Gertrude never spoke for herself
alone; she was at all times representative--almost symbolic. Homage met
in her not a personal gratitude, but the approval of a high, unbroken
tradition. She accepted it graciously, without obvious egotism, not as
due to her as a temporal being, but as due--under God--to that timeless
entity, her class. I am not satirizing Gertrude; I am praising her. She,
more than any person I have ever known, made of her perishing substance
the temple of a completely realized ideal.

It was, I am forced to assume, because I had failed in entire respect
for and submission to this ideal that she had finally abandoned me. It
was not so much incompatibility of temperament as incompatibility of
worship. She had removed a hallowed shrine from a felt indifference and
a possible contamination. That was all, but it was everything. And as I
walked into the reception room I saw that the shrine was still
beautiful, faultlessly tended, and ready for any absolute but dignified
sacrifice.

"Gertrude," I began, "it's splendid of you to overlook my inexcusable
rudeness of yesterday! I'm very grateful."

"I have not forgiven you," she replied, with casual indignation--just
enough for sincerity and not a shade too much for art. "Don't imagine
it's pleasant for me to be here. I should hardly have risked your
misinterpreting it, if any other course had seemed possible."

"You might simply have waited," I said. "It was my