ng to Mary, as he had
frequently done already. "Don't you find that, too? Sometimes when we're
alone, I've counted the time on my watch"--here he took out a large gold
watch, and tapped the glass--"the time between one remark and the next.
And once I counted ten minutes and twenty seconds, and then, if you'll
believe me, she only said 'Um!'"

"I'm sure I'm sorry," Katharine apologized. "I know it's a bad habit,
but then, you see, at home--"

The rest of her excuse was cut short, so far as Mary was concerned,
by the closing of the door. She fancied she could hear William finding
fresh fault on the stairs. A moment later, the door-bell rang again, and
Katharine reappeared, having left her purse on a chair. She soon found
it, and said, pausing for a moment at the door, and speaking differently
as they were alone:

"I think being engaged is very bad for the character." She shook her
purse in her hand until the coins jingled, as if she alluded merely
to this example of her forgetfulness. But the remark puzzled Mary;
it seemed to refer to something else; and her manner had changed so
strangely, now that William was out of hearing, that she could not help
looking at her for an explanation. She looked almost stern, so that
Mary, trying to smile at her, only succeeded in producing a silent stare
of interrogation.

As the door shut for the second time, she sank on to the floor in front
of the fire, trying, now that their bodies were not there to distract
her, to piece together her impressions of them as a whole. And, though
priding herself, with all other men and women, upon an infallible eye
for character, she could not feel at all certain that she knew what
motives inspired Katharine Hilbery in life. There was something
that carried her on smoothly, out of reach--something, yes, but
what?--something that reminded Mary of Ralph. Oddly enough, he gave
her the same feeling, too, and with him, too, she felt baffled. Oddly
enough, for no two people, she hastily concluded, were more unlike. And
yet both had this hidden impulse, this incalculable force--this thing
they cared for and didn't talk about--oh, what was it?

CHAPTER XV

The village of Disham lies somewhere on the rolling piece of cultivated
ground in the neighborhood of Lincoln, not so far inland but that a
sound, bringing rumors of the sea, can be heard on summer nights or when
the winter storms fling the waves upon the long beach. So large is
the church, and i