old them. In the extraordinary situation he found nothing
adequate to say. Mariana might have been going unremarkably to Charlotte
and her home; she was absolutely contained. James Polder had a dazed
expression; without his companion, Howat thought, he would blunder into
the walls. He stood, holding the bags until told to put them down.
Honduras was soon at the door. Mariana moved forward, and mechanically
Howat Penny made his customary pretence of avoiding her kiss. The warm
fragrance of her lips remained long after she had gone.

A pervasive stillness settled upon Shadrach; outside the sunlight lay on
the hills in a thick, yellow veil; the cool interior held only the
familiar crepitation of the old clock above. Now, he told himself, he
could read the papers peacefully; but he sat with empty hands. Mariana
had gone. "Outrageous conduct," he said aloud, without conviction. His
voice sounded thin, unfamiliar. His dreams of her continued superiority
to the commonplace, of her fine aloofness like the elevation of the
strains of _Orfeo_, had been utterly destroyed. He could not imagine a
greater descent than the one which had overtaken her. As he rehearsed
its details they seemed increasingly disgraceful. He could not forgive
James Polder for his relapse, his shocking failure to maintain the
standards, the obligations, bred into himself, Howat Penny, by so many
years, and by blood. It was that miserable old business of Jasper's once
more, blighting the present, betraying Mariana.

This wheeled in his brain throughout summer. He had, as he expected, no
word from her. Charlotte, too, sent no line; he was isolated in the
increasing and waning heat, in a sea of greenery growing heavy and grey
with dust, then swept by rain, and touched with the scarlet finality of
frost. Rudolph lit again the hickory fires in the middle hearth; the
days shortened rapidly; sitting before the glow of the logs he could
see, through a western window, the afternoon expiring in a sullen red
flame. The leaves streamed sibilantly by the eaves and accumulated in
dry, russet heaps in angles and hollows; they burned in crackling fires,
filling the air with a drifting haze rich with suggestion and memories.
He saw the first snow on a leaden morning when the flexible and bald
white covering, devoid of charm, held the significance of barrenness,
death. All day this chilling similitude lingered in his mind. He walked
about the house slowly, unpleasantly consci