pounds, had done to her. She was
radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but
increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark
green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and
texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a single
brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In the hat,
too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter green.

She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who
was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her
with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always her
way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest,
magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her, nothing of charm
and beauty and eloquence,--how eloquent she had always been!--of
esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full
toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some
piled-up tables in the centre of the shop.

Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes,
at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance--he could
not say trouble--had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the
corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic,
self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent
and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old
days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of
these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a
lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap
into full exercise, or even to recognize itself.

So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been
capable--not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to
acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of
fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster,
his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even
wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves--so dead that
no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in his
breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was conscious of
a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to the situation.

Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of
the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and co