k. Mariana would be
along immediately, Howat Penny thought. He put the album aside and rose,
moving toward the door that led without. He was a slender, erect figure,
with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of
his hair--it had, evidently, been black--and a rigidity of body only
apparent to a sharp scrutiny.

A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he
stood peering into the gathering dusk. The old willow tree, inhabited by
the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista
of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp
glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left. His lawn dropped to
the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and
beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning
from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.

The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the
short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance
directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort,
on kissing him. "It's wonderful here, after the city," she proclaimed;
"and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. I'll dress right
away."

Honduras, his coloured man, as indispensable outside as Rudolph was in,
followed with her bag up the narrow flight of steps to the floor above.
He waited through, he thought, a reasonable interval, and then called.
An indistinguishable reply floated down, mingled with the filling of a
tub; and another half hour passed before Mariana appeared in white
chiffon, securing a broad girdle of silver oak leaves, about her slight
waist. "Do you mind?" she turned before him; and, with an impatience
half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
"As you know," he reminded her, "I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
have a gin and bitters?"

She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
her features, with the exception of her eyes,