rowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers.
"Comfortable, isn't it," she addressed him; "this feeling of
superiority?" He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. "I wish I'd
married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam'
admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and
aren't?" It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do
with inherited associations. "Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible," she
asserted; "and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate."

"Really, Mariana," he protested, "at times you are a little rough. She
is a very fine girl; in fact, reminds me of Scalchi. Old Byron, though,
what--a regular catafalque!" A blundering step mounted to the stair;
Kingsfrere entered and stood wavering and concerned, the collar wilted
and a gaiter missing. "Ought to do something about the front door," he
asserted; "frightful condition, no paint; and full of splinters. Very
plump splinters," he specified, examining a hand. Mariana surveyed him
coolly, thoroughly. "Sweet, isn't he?" she remarked. "Kingsfrere Gilbert
Todd Jannan."

"That's absolutely all," that individual assured her. "Except if you
want to add Sturgeon; some do. Hullow, Howat! Grand old boy, Howat," he
told her. "But if he says I'm drunk, I will tell you one of Bundy's
stories about him. This--this elegant deception tremendous noise with
the song birds." He sat abruptly on a providentially convenient chair.
There, limply, he hiccoughed. "Sweet," Mariana repeated. Kingsfrere
finally rose, and, with a friendly wave, wandered from the room.

"It was good of you to take me, Howat," she told him wearily. "Although,
now, I can see that you went willingly enough. You thought it would cure
me. But of what, Howat--of love? Of a feeling that, perhaps, I'd found a
reason for living?"

A decidedly uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an
unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation
to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured
himself; Mariana's inherent, well--prejudices, couldn't be charged to
him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She
was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for
her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of
living. He recalled the discontent, the feeling of sterility, that had
lately possessed him; the suspicion that his life had been in vain. All
his ph