ss evident. The whole balance of Marcella's
temper changed in some sort as she talked to him. She found herself
wanting to please, instead of wanting to conquer, to make an effect.

"You have just come from the village, I think?" said Hallin. "Aldous
tells me you take a great interest in the people?"

He looked at her kindly, the look of one who saw all his
fellow-creatures nobly, as it were, and to their best advantage.

"One may take an interest," she said, in a dissatisfied voice, poking at
the snow crystals on the road before her with the thorn-stick she
carried, "but one can do so little. And I don't know anything; not even
what I want myself."

"No; one can do next to nothing. And systems and theories don't matter,
or, at least, very little. Yet, when you and Aldous are together, there
will be more chance of _doing_, for you than for most. You will be two
happy and powerful people! His power will be doubled by happiness; I
have always known that."

Marcella was seized with shyness, looked away, and did not know what to
answer. At last she said abruptly--her head still turned to the woods
on her left--

"Are you sure he is going to be happy?"

"Shall I produce his letter to me?" he said, bantering--"or letters? For
I knew a great deal about you before October 5" (their engagement-day),
"and suspected what was going to happen long before Aldous did. No;
after all, no! Those letters are my last bit of the old friendship. But
the new began that same day," he hastened to add, smiling: "It may be
richer than the old; I don't know. It depends on you."

"I don't think--I am a very satisfactory friend," said Marcella, still
awkward, and speaking with difficulty.

"Well, let me find out, won't you? I don't think Aldous would call me
exacting. I believe he would give me a decent character, though I tease
him a good deal. You must let me tell you sometime what he did for
me--what he was to me--at Cambridge? I shall always feel sorry for
Aldous's wife that she did not know him at college."

A shock went through Marcella at the word--that tremendous word--wife.
As Hallin said it, there was something intolerable in the claim it made!

"I should like you to tell me," she said faintly. Then she added, with
more energy and a sudden advance of friendliness, "But you really must
come in and rest. Aldous told me he thought the walk from the Court was
too much for you. Shall we take this short way?"

And she opened a litt