ghness in it that humanises, somehow--it was _too_
clear before, though that sounds absurd.

Everybody wondering how everybody else will take her
retirement. Strangely enough, no one regrets much,
personally, but all sure the others will! Are we all more
clear-sighted than we suppose--or more sentimental? Surgeon
from Vienna has pronounced condition final. Either she is a
wonderful actress or else we have overestimated her vocation;
she seems absolutely contented. And yet, think of her
triumphs! And of course, her greatest successes were all to
come. Madame M---- is furious, but told Sue she had never
trusted Roger--he was always too silent! "He has absorbed a
great artist like so much blotting-paper!" she said. But he
has got something into her eyes that Madame never saw there:
we all agree on that. How did Alif put it--"Tis Allah sets
the price, brother--we have but to pay." Well, she's paid.
And old Roger, for that matter, and Sue, and Tip--and I. Who
keeps the shop, I wonder?

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SUNSET END

To-day I went to Mary's wedding, and it has made me very thoughtful.
She was very lovely--a great, blooming blonde, the image of Roger.
They were a fine pair, as he held her on his arm: he looking younger
than his sixty years, she older than her twenty, for all the children
are wonderfully mature and well-developed.

She was nearly as tall as young Paynter, whose slenderness, however,
is like steel. I well remember when Dr. McGee took him to North
Carolina and made him over--a weak, irritable little precocity of
twelve or so. He never ate or slept in a house for three years, and I
think that the birds and trees of that period got into his opera and
made it what it is, the musical event of a decade. He works best in
Paris, and they will live there, after a honeymoon on the Island.

I don't think Mary was ever the favourite child, though each of the
six thinks it is, Margarita is so wonderful with them! She cannot hide
from me, who watch every light in her eye, that young Roger, the
second child and oldest boy, means a shade more to her than the
others, just as Roger, when he sits alone with Sue, the second
daughter, talks to her more confidentially than to any of the others,
and watches her yellow head most steadily when they are all swimming,
off the Island wharf. They are both fine, big girls, just as Roger and
my namesake are f