the rich fact that she
_had_ been was there between them, and with an effect of the frankly,
fearlessly, harmlessly intimate fireside passage for it that went beyond
even the best memories of the pleasant past. He hadn't "amused" her, no,
in quite the same way as in the Rue de Marignan time--it had then been
he who for the most part took frequent turns, emphatic, explosive,
elocutionary, over that wonderful waxed parquet while she laughed as for
the young perversity of him from the depths of the second, the matching
_bergere_. To-day she herself held and swept the floor, putting him
merely to the trouble of his perpetual "Brava!" But that was all through
the change of basis--the amusement, another name only for the thrilled
absorption, having been inevitably for _him_; as how could it have
failed to be with such a regular "treat" to his curiosity? With the
tea-hour now other callers were turning up, and he got away on the plea
of his wanting so to think it all over. He hoped again he hadn't too
queer a grin with his assurance to her, as if she would quite know what
he meant, that he had been thrilled to the core. But she returned, quite
radiantly, that he had carried _her_ completely away; and her sincerity
was proved by the final frankness of their temporary parting. "My
pleasure of you is selfish, horribly, I admit; so that if _that_ doesn't
suit you--!" Her faded beauty flushed again as she said it.

IV

In the street again, as he resumed his walk, he saw how perfectly it
would _have_ to suit him and how he probably for a long time wouldn't
be suited otherwise. Between them and that time, however, what mightn't,
for him, poor devil, on his new basis, have happened? She wasn't at any
rate within any calculable period going to care so much for anything
as for the so quaintly droll terms in which her rearrangement with her
husband--thanks to that gentleman's inimitable fatuity--would have to
be made. This was what it was to own, exactly, her special grace--the
brightest gaiety in the finest sensibility; _such_ a display of which
combination, Mark felt as he went (if he could but have done it still
more justice) she must have regaled him with! That exquisite last flush
of her fadedness could only remain with him; yet while he presently
stopped at a street-corner in a district redeemed from desolation but by
the passage just then of a choked trolley-car that howled, as he paused
for it, beneath the weight of its hu