on't mean
that. Especially," she added, showing a light through the mist, "if one
wanted to do it."

Then he knew she had made up her mind, and though on some accounts he
would have liked to laugh with her, on other accounts he felt that he
owed it to her to be serious.

"If women could not fulfil the ideal in that way--if they did not
constantly do it--there would be no marriages for love."

"Do you think so?" she asked, with a shaking voice. "But men--men are
ideal, too."

"Not as women are--except now and then some fool like Alford." Now,
indeed, he laughed, and he began to praise Alford from his heart, so
delicately, so tenderly, so reverently, that Mrs. Yarrow laughed too
before he was done, and cried a little, and when she rose to leave she
could not speak; but clung to his hand, on turning away, and so flung it
from behind her with a gesture that Enderby thought pretty.

At this point, Wanhope stopped as if that were the end.

"And did she let Alford come to see her again?" Rulledge, at once
romantic and literal, demanded.

"Oh yes. At any rate, they were married that fall. They are--I believe
he's pursuing his archaeological studies there--living in Athens."

"Together?" Minver smoothly inquired.

At this expression of cynicism Rulledge gave him a look that would have
incinerated another. Wanhope went out with Minver, and then, after a
moment's daze, Rulledge exclaimed: "Jove! I forgot to ask him whether
it's stopped Alford's illusions!"

III

A MEMORY THAT WORKED OVERTIME

Minver's brother took down from the top of the low bookshelf a small
painting on panel, which he first studied in the obverse, and then
turned and contemplated on the back with the same dreamy smile. "I don't
see how that got _here_," he said, absently.

"Well," Minver returned, "you don't expect _me_ to tell you, except on
the principle that any one would naturally know more about anything of
yours than you would." He took it from his brother and looked at the
front of it. "It isn't bad. It's pretty good!" He turned it round. "Why,
it's one of old Blakey's! How did _you_ come by it?"

"Stole it, probably," Minver's brother said, still thoughtfully. Then
with an effect of recollecting: "No, come to think of it," he added,
"Blakey gave it to me." The Minvers played these little comedies
together, quite as much to satisfy their tenderness for each other as to
give their friends pleasure. "Think you're the only painter