they proved themselves lower, not really culpable because they
are children and not rightly guided--it is a pity that garden cannot
keep on blooming even out of the midden of the earth. But he had kept
the garden blooming. Addington had a tremendous grip on him. It was not
that he had never seen other customs, other manners. He had travelled a
reasonable amount for an Addington man, but always he had been able to
believe that Eden is what it was when there was but one man in it and
one woman. There was, of course, too, the serpent. But Alston was
fastidious, and he kept his mind as far away from the serpent as
possible. He thought of his mother and sister, and instantly ceased
thinking of them, because to them Esther was probably a sweet person,
and he knew they would not have recognised the Esther he saw to-night.
Perhaps, though he did not know this, his mother might.

Mrs. Choate was a large, almost masculine looking woman, very plain
indeed, Addington owned, but with beautiful manners. She was not like
Alston, not like his sister, who had a highbred charm, something in the
way of Alston's own. Mother was different. She was of the Griswolds who
had land in Cuba and other islands, and were said to have kept slaves
there while the Choates were pouring blood into the abolitionist cause.
There was a something about mother quite different from anybody in
Addington. She conformed beautifully, but you would have felt she
understood your not conforming. She never came to grief over the
neutralities of the place, and you realised it was because she expressed
so few opinions. You might have said she had taken Addington for what it
was and exhausted it long ago. Her gaze was an absent, yet, of late
years, a placid one. She might have been dwelling upon far-off islands
which excited in her no desire to be there. She was too cognisant of
the infinite riches of time that may be supposed to make up eternity. If
she was becalmed here in Addington, some far-off day a wind would fill
her sails and she might seek the farther seas. And, like her son, she
read novels.

Alston, going home at midnight, saw the pale glimmer in her room and
knew she was at it there. He went directly upstairs and stopped at her
door, open into the hall. He was not conscious of having anything to
say. Only he did feel a curious hesitation for the moment. Here in
Addington was an Esther whom he had just met for the first time. Here
was another woman who had no