he glamor
goes. So I've always found," and he proceeded to tell them, as he peeled
his apple, how he committed himself once, in his youthful days, to make
a speech at a political meeting, and went there ablaze with enthusiasm
for the ideals of his own side; but while his leaders spoke, he became
gradually converted to the other way of thinking, if thinking it could
be called, and had to feign illness in order to avoid making a fool of
himself--an experience which had sickened him of public meetings.

Katharine listened and felt as she generally did when her father, and
to some extent her mother, described their feelings, that she quite
understood and agreed with them, but, at the same time, saw something
which they did not see, and always felt some disappointment when they
fell short of her vision, as they always did. The plates succeeded each
other swiftly and noiselessly in front of her, and the table was decked
for dessert, and as the talk murmured on in familiar grooves, she sat
there, rather like a judge, listening to her parents, who did, indeed,
feel it very pleasant when they made her laugh.

Daily life in a house where there are young and old is full of curious
little ceremonies and pieties, which are discharged quite punctually,
though the meaning of them is obscure, and a mystery has come to brood
over them which lends even a superstitious charm to their performance.
Such was the nightly ceremony of the cigar and the glass of port, which
were placed on the right hand and on the left hand of Mr. Hilbery, and
simultaneously Mrs. Hilbery and Katharine left the room. All the years
they had lived together they had never seen Mr. Hilbery smoke his cigar
or drink his port, and they would have felt it unseemly if, by chance,
they had surprised him as he sat there. These short, but clearly marked,
periods of separation between the sexes were always used for an intimate
postscript to what had been said at dinner, the sense of being women
together coming out most strongly when the male sex was, as if by some
religious rite, secluded from the female. Katharine knew by heart
the sort of mood that possessed her as she walked upstairs to the
drawing-room, her mother's arm in hers; and she could anticipate the
pleasure with which, when she had turned on the lights, they both
regarded the drawing-room, fresh swept and set in order for the
last section of the day, with the red parrots swinging on the chintz
curtains, and the