f the
others perhaps--just to have her retinue and play the queen in her
world. And at last humiliation, bitter humiliation, and Mamie with her
chin in the air and her bright triumphant smile looking down on him.

Hadn't he, she asked, had the privilege of loving her?

She took herself at the value they had set upon her.

Well--somehow--that wasn't right....

All the way across the Atlantic Mr. Direck had been trying to forget her
downward glance with the chin up, during that last encounter--and other
aspects of the same humiliation. The years he had spent upon her! The
time! Always relying upon her assurance of a special preference for him.
He tried to think he was suffering from the pangs of unrequited love,
and to conceal from himself just how bitterly his pride and vanity had
been rent by her ultimate rejection. There had been a time when she had
given him reason to laugh in his sleeve at Booth Wilmington.

Perhaps Booth Wilmington had also had reason for laughing in his
sleeve....

Had she even loved Booth Wilmington? Or had she just snatched at him?...

Wasn't he, Direck, as good a man as Booth Wilmington anyhow?...

For some moments the old sting of jealousy rankled again. He recalled
the flaring rivalry that had ended in his defeat, the competition of
gifts and treats.... A thing so open that all Carrierville knew of it,
discussed it, took sides.... And over it all Mamie with her flashing
smile had sailed like a processional goddess....

Why, they had made jokes about him in the newspapers!

One couldn't imagine such a contest in Matching's Easy. Yet surely even
in Matching's Easy there are lovers.

Is it something in the air, something in the climate that makes things
harder and clearer in America?...

Cissie--why shouldn't one call her Cissie in one's private thoughts
anyhow?--would never be as hard and clear as Mamie. She had English
eyes--merciful eyes....

That was the word--_merciful_!

The English light, the English air, are merciful....

Merciful....

They tolerate old things and slow things and imperfect apprehensions.
They aren't always getting at you....

They don't laugh at you.... At least--they laugh differently....

Was England the tolerant country? With its kind eyes and its wary
sidelong look. Toleration. In which everything mellowed and nothing was
destroyed. A soft country. A country with a passion for imperfection. A
padded country....

England--all stuffed with soft f