ns of the classics, it was hardly his custom
to admire. But she knew that she was looking her best sitting there, her
really beautiful figure poised, the sun shining on her brown hair, and
brightening her deep-set, ice-green eyes under their black lashes. It
was sometimes a great comfort to her that she remained so good-looking.
It would have been an added vexation indeed to have felt that she ruffled
her husband's fastidiousness. Even so, her cheekbones were too high for
his taste, symbols of that something in her character which did not go
with his--the dash of desperation, of vividness, that lack of a certain
English smoothness, which always annoyed him.

"Harold!"--she would never quite flatten her r's--"I want to go to the
mountains this year."

The mountains! She had not seen them since that season at San Martino di
Castrozza twelve years ago, which had ended in her marrying him.

"Nostalgia!"

"I don't know what that means--I am homesick. Can we go?"

"If you like--why not? But no leading up the Cimone della Pala for ME!"

She knew what he meant by that. No romance. How splendidly he had led
that day! She had almost worshipped him. What blindness! What
distortion! Was it really the same man standing there with those bright,
doubting eyes, with grey already in his hair? Yes, romance was over!
And she sat silent, looking out into the street--that little old street
into which she looked day and night. A figure passed out there, came to
the door, and rang.

She said softly: "Here is Mark Lennan!"

She felt her husband's eyes rest on her just for a moment, knew that he
had turned, heard him murmur: "Ah, the angel clown!" And, quite still,
she waited for the door to open. There was the boy, with his blessed
dark head, and his shy, gentle gravity, and his essay in his hand.

"Well, Lennan, and how's old Noll? Hypocrite of genius, eh? Draw up;
let's get him over!"

Motionless, from her seat at the window, she watched those two figures at
the table--the boy reading in his queer, velvety bass voice; her husband
leaning back with the tips of his fingers pressed together, his head a
little on one side, and that faint, satiric smile which never reached his
eyes. Yes, he was dozing, falling asleep; and the boy, not seeing, was
going on. Then he came to the end and glanced up. What eyes he had!
Other boys would have laughed; but he looked almost sorry. She heard him
murmur: "I'm awfully sorry, si