As he drew nearer, his figure was suddenly displaced by that of her
husband, whom, from the same point, she had so often seen advancing down
the same perspective. Straight, spare, erect, looking to right and
left with quick precise turns of the head, and stopping now and then to
straighten a chair or alter the position of a vase, Fraser Leath used
to march toward her through the double file of furniture like a general
reviewing a regiment drawn up for his inspection. At a certain point,
midway across the second room, he always stopped before the mantel-piece
of pinkish-yellow marble and looked at himself in the tall garlanded
glass that surmounted it. She could not remember that he had ever found
anything to straighten or alter in his own studied attire, but she had
never known him to omit the inspection when he passed that particular
mirror.

When it was over he continued more briskly on his way, and the resulting
expression of satisfaction was still on his face when he entered the oak
sitting-room to greet his wife...

The spectral projection of this little daily scene hung but for a moment
before Anna, but in that moment she had time to fling a wondering glance
across the distance between her past and present. Then the footsteps of
the present came close, and she had to drop the geraniums to give her
hand to Darrow...

"Yes, let us walk down to the river."

They had neither of them, as yet, found much to say to each other.
Darrow had arrived late on the previous afternoon, and during the
evening they had had between them Owen Leath and their own thoughts. Now
they were alone for the first time and the fact was enough in itself.
Yet Anna was intensely aware that as soon as they began to talk more
intimately they would feel that they knew each other less well.

They passed out onto the terrace and down the steps to the gravel walk
below. The delicate frosting of dew gave the grass a bluish shimmer, and
the sunlight, sliding in emerald streaks along the tree-boles, gathered
itself into great luminous blurs at the end of the wood-walks, and hung
above the fields a watery glory like the ring about an autumn moon.

"It's good to be here," Darrow said.

They took a turn to the left and stopped for a moment to look back at
the long pink house-front, plainer, friendlier, less adorned than on the
side toward the court. So prolonged yet delicate had been the friction
of time upon its bricks that certain expanses had