nd that
your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we
say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense, Katharine," she urged, "it's
the truth, it's the only truth."

Katharine was on the point of interrupting her mother, and then she was
on the point of confiding in her. They came strangely close together
sometimes. But, while she hesitated and sought for words not too direct,
her mother had recourse to Shakespeare, and turned page after page,
set upon finding some quotation which said all this about love far, far
better than she could. Accordingly, Katharine did nothing but scrub one
of her circles an intense black with her pencil, in the midst of which
process the telephone-bell rang, and she left the room to answer it.

When she returned, Mrs. Hilbery had found not the passage she wanted,
but another of exquisite beauty as she justly observed, looking up for a
second to ask Katharine who that was?

"Mary Datchet," Katharine replied briefly.

"Ah--I half wish I'd called you Mary, but it wouldn't have gone with
Hilbery, and it wouldn't have gone with Rodney. Now this isn't the
passage I wanted. (I never can find what I want.) But it's spring; it's
the daffodils; it's the green fields; it's the birds."

She was cut short in her quotation by another imperative telephone-bell.
Once more Katharine left the room.

"My dear child, how odious the triumphs of science are!" Mrs. Hilbery
exclaimed on her return. "They'll be linking us with the moon next--but
who was that?"

"William," Katharine replied yet more briefly.

"I'll forgive William anything, for I'm certain that there aren't any
Williams in the moon. I hope he's coming to luncheon?"

"He's coming to tea."

"Well, that's better than nothing, and I promise to leave you alone."

"There's no need for you to do that," said Katharine.

She swept her hand over the faded sheet, and drew herself up squarely
to the table as if she refused to waste time any longer. The gesture was
not lost upon her mother. It hinted at the existence of something stern
and unapproachable in her daughter's character, which struck chill upon
her, as the sight of poverty, or drunkenness, or the logic with which
Mr. Hilbery sometimes thought good to demolish her certainty of an
approaching millennium struck chill upon her. She went back to her own
table, and putting on her spectacles with a curious expression of quiet
humility, addressed herself for the first time tha