ers about
which I know nothing!--when the brass Canterbury Pilgrim was lifted
twice and we heard a real knock on a real door ... tap-tap!

It was Mrs. Carville. She stepped quickly into the room so that the door
might be closed on the cold night air, and looked round with an unwonted
gaiety in her mien. As her gaze fell upon the two little boys, who stood
close to my knee and hampered my rising, I fancied the expression of
her fine dark eyes hardened a little. It may have been only fancy, but
it made me wonder if the cause of her elation lay beyond the family
circle. At first I had a twinge, for when a woman, whose husband is in
some Mediterranean port, is elated by something beyond her front door,
the world (and I belonged to the world, after all) looks grave. I
suppose I myself looked grave as I bowed, for she regarded me--her eyes
coming back to my face for a moment--with a certain gallant challenge,
as though she read my shadowy thought and defied it. And then, sitting
back in my chair again and watching her respond to the charm of my
friend's manner, I could not help wishing that Mr. Carville had seen fit
to give us a little more of his wife's character in his narrative. It
seemed to me that the dry, clear light of his recondite mind would have
thrown into admirable gleams and shadows, gleams of humour and shadows
of blind fate, the brilliant creature who sat before us. There was
nothing material in her manner as she let her glance fall again upon the
children. The gaiety super-imposed upon her customary staid gravity
seemed to have made her, not younger or less mature, but less domestic,
more complex and mystifying. And I found myself recalling Mr. Carville's
contemptuous moralizings upon the illusory nature of love. I tried,
foolish as it may seem, to place myself intellectually in the place of a
woman like Mrs. Carville, to conceive her probable fundamental attitude
towards her offspring, trodden smooth and firm by the daily round of
chores, an active, vigorous mind in an active, vigorous body.... Well,
this was journeyman's work, I suppose, for a novelist; yet for me it had
a freshness and spice that led me on until I pulled up sharply and felt
the pang of shame. I am continually torn in the conflict between realism
and what are called "unworthy thoughts." If it were not for a fear of
traducing my own character by an ambiguous phrase, I would confess to
many "unworthy thoughts" of many worthy people. I suppress