that went in and upwards,
it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of a
little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the years
would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing.

She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made one
think of water bubbling on a dry summer day.

It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew the
handful of young men together, time after time.

Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book,
was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna only
counted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end of
the room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gathered
there, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in
turn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for
something to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna.
The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, she
met with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interest
whatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music," and
was unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by the
noise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the
literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at what
he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him.
She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after having
dutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, one
by one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly
dressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big American
rocking-chair--going backwards, it carried her feet right off the
ground--and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own
light laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like an
organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlessly
amusing.

As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time--it now
leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in the
LESSINGSTRASSE--he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparaging
way; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise than
with respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna's
good qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her,
and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie,
and had, as it