ter all, at the
bottom of his impulse to call on Mrs. Vervain! It was absurd, if you
like--but it was delightfully rejuvenating. He could recall the time
when he had been afraid of being obvious: now he felt that this return
to the primitive emotions might be as restorative as a holiday in
the Canadian woods. And it was precisely by the girl's candor, her
directness, her lack of complications, that he was taken. The sense that
she might say something rash at any moment was positively exhilarating:
if she had thrown her arms about him at the station he would not have
given a thought to his crumpled dignity. It surprised Thursdale to find
what freshness of heart he brought to the adventure; and though his
sense of irony prevented his ascribing his intactness to any conscious
purpose, he could but rejoice in the fact that his sentimental economies
had left him such a large surplus to draw upon.

Mrs. Vervain was at home--as usual. When one visits the cemetery one
expects to find the angel on the tombstone, and it struck Thursdale as
another proof of his friend's good taste that she had been in no undue
haste to change her habits. The whole house appeared to count on his
coming; the footman took his hat and overcoat as naturally as though
there had been no lapse in his visits; and the drawing-room at once
enveloped him in that atmosphere of tacit intelligence which Mrs.
Vervain imparted to her very furniture.

It was a surprise that, in this general harmony of circumstances, Mrs.
Vervain should herself sound the first false note.

"You?" she exclaimed; and the book she held slipped from her hand.

It was crude, certainly; unless it were a touch of the finest art. The
difficulty of classifying it disturbed Thursdale's balance.

"Why not?" he said, restoring the book. "Isn't it my hour?" And as she
made no answer, he added gently, "Unless it's some one else's?"

She laid the book aside and sank back into her chair. "Mine, merely,"
she said.

"I hope that doesn't mean that you're unwilling to share it?"

"With you? By no means. You're welcome to my last crust."

He looked at her reproachfully. "Do you call this the last?"

She smiled as he dropped into the seat across the hearth. "It's a way of
giving it more flavor!"

He returned the smile. "A visit to you doesn't need such condiments."

She took this with just the right measure of retrospective amusement.

"Ah, but I want to put into this one a very special tas