ll as it were neglecting his
needs and crowding to the windows to stare, and meanwhile she spoke
again, with something of the frankness of one who thinks aloud.

"You see," she said, "one _doesn't_ hear. One thinks perhaps----And
there it is. When one marries very young one is apt to take so much for
granted. And afterwards----"

She was wonderfully expressive in her inexpressiveness, he thought, but
found as yet no saving phrase. Her thought continued to drop from her.
"One sees them so much that at last one doesn't see them."

She turned away to survey the little house again; it was visible in
bright strips between the red-scarred pine stems. She looked at it chin
up, with a still approval--but she was the slenderest loveliness, and
with such a dignity!--and she spoke at length as though the board had
never existed. "It's like a little piece of another world; so bright and
so--perfect."

There was the phantom of a sigh in her voice.

"I think you'll be charmed by our rockery," he said. "It was one of our
particular efforts. Every time we two went abroad we came back with
something, stonecrop or Alpine or some little bulb from the wayside."

"How can you leave it!"

He was leaving it because it bored him to death. But so intricate is the
human mind that it was with perfect sincerity he answered: "It will be a
tremendous wrench.... I have to go."

"And you've written most of your books here and lived here!"

The note of sympathy in her voice gave him a sudden suspicion that she
imagined his departure due to poverty. Now to be poor as an author is to
be unpopular, and he valued his popularity--with the better sort of
people. He hastened to explain. "I have to go, because here, you see,
here, neither for me nor my little son, is it Life. It's a place of
memories, a place of accomplished beauty. My son already breaks away,--a
preparatory school at Margate. Healthier, better, for us to break
altogether I feel, wrench though it may. It's full for us at least--a
new tenant would be different of course--but for _us_ it's full of
associations we can't alter, can't for the life of us change. Nothing
you see goes on. And life you know _is_ change--change and going on."

He paused impressively on his generalization.

"But you will want----You will want to hand it over to--to sympathetic
people of course. People," she faltered, "who will understand."

Mr. Brumley took an immense stride--conversationally. "I am certain