ted sagely to poets and youthful heats,
and I knew that I loved her hopelessly, with a love that put out my
love for Roger and my mother as the sun puts out the small and steady
stars.

I had left a bewitching, unlikely elf; I found a magnificent woman.
She seemed to my gloating eyes to have grown tall, though that might
have been the effect of her loosely flowing, long-trained gown, which
was as if she had put on a garment of shot green and blue silk and
then another over it of rich, yellowish lace. The neck was cut in a
sort of square, such as one sees in the pictures of Venetian ladies
in the _cinque cento_, and at the base of her full throat lay an
antique necklace of aqua marines. Heavens! How perfect she was! As she
moved over in her grand free stride and took my hands in both of hers,
vitality and glowing strength seemed to pour along her veins into
mine; she seemed almost extravagantly alive, and I a pallid, stupid
dabbler on the shore of things. Her figure was much fuller; her arm,
where the loose lace sleeve fell back from it, was plump and round,
and this and the increased softness of her throat and chin added a
year or two--yes, three or four--to what I had hitherto believed to be
her age. She was a fit mate for Roger now; no longer a captured
child-witch.

I bent over her hands, to cover my emotion, and ceremoniously kissed
the backs of them; there was a creamy dimple below each finger now. As
I lifted my head and heard Roger's chuckle of delight at my amazement
at her, I saw for the first time that we three were not alone in the
room, and found myself bowing to a neat, chill British spinster, big
and white of tooth, big and flat of waist, big and bony of knuckle.
She wore sensible, square-toed boots and the fashion of her clothing
suggested a conscientious tailor who had momentarily lost sight of her
sex. She bore a _pince-nez_ upon her flat chest, the necessity for
which was obvious, but her short-sighted blue eyes were kind and the
grasp of her knuckly hand was human. She was a thorough-going lady if
she was a trifle grotesque, and my respectful friendship for Barbara
Jencks, late of the household of the Governor-General of Canada, has
never waned.

"You find Mrs. Bradley somewhat changed, I dare say," she remarked, by
way of breaking a rather strained silence, for Roger, never talkative,
was hunting among a pile of guide-books and Margarita was staring
dreamily into the sunset, now a miracle of gold