cordiality, critically and somewhat
inimically assessing the car, which he referred to as 'she.' Marguerite
had remained in the studio. She was wonderful. She admired her husband
too simply, and she was too content, but she had marvellous qualities of
naturalness, common sense in demeanour, realism, and placidity. Thanks
to her remarkable instinct for taking things for granted, the interview
had been totally immune from constraint. It was difficult, and she had
made it seem easy. No fuss, no false sentiment! And she looked very
nice, very interesting, quite attractive, in her mourning and in her
expectancy. A fine couple. Unassuming of course, narrow,
opinionated--(he surmised that the last days of the late Mr. Haim had
been disciplined)--but no fools either, and fundamentally decent. While
condescending to them, he somehow envied them. But he knew what the
opinion of Lois about them would be!

IV

After a period of shallow sleep he woke up in the morning factitiously
refreshed as the train was rumbling slowly over the high-level bridge.
The sun blinked full in his eyes when he looked out through the
trellis-work of the bridge. Far below, the river was tinged with the
pale blue of the sky. Big ships lay in the river as if they had never
moved and never could move; a steamer in process of painting, with her
sides lifted above the water, gleamed in irregular patches of brilliant
scarlet. A lively tug passed down-stream, proud of her early rising;
and, smaller even than the tug, a smack, running close-hauled, bowed to
the puffs of the light breeze. Farther away the lofty chimneys sent
their scarves of smoke into the air, and the vast skeletons of incipient
vessels could be descried through webs of staging. The translucent
freshness of the calm scene was miraculous; it divinely intoxicated the
soul, and left no squalor and no ugliness anywhere.

Then, as the line curved, came the view of the city beneath its delicate
canopy of mist. The city was built on escarpments, on ridges, on hills,
and sagged here and there into great hollows. The serrated silhouette of
it wrote romance upon the sky, and the contours of the naked earth
beyond lost themselves grandly in the mystery of the north. The jutting
custom-house was a fine piece of architecture. From the eighteen-forties
it challenged grimly the modern architect. On his hasty first visit to
the city George had noticed little save that custom-house. He had seen a
slatter