hell of a lot of it in the doing of them."

He sat and puffed at his pipe, while she remained standing, looking
down into the fire.

The silence was long, then it was broken abruptly. A knock rattled
gently on the door. It was soft, timid, but it rushed violently
through their silence. Traill slid to his feet. His sister stood
erect. Her eyes fastened to his face, and she watched him calculating
the possibilities, as if he were counting them on his fingers, of
whom it might be.

Then it came again.

"Who do you think it is?" she whispered. She was beginning already
to shrink at the thought that some woman had come to see him. He heard
that in her voice and casually smiled.

"It's all right," he said quietly. "I shan't let any one in who'd
offend your sense of propriety. However I talk, we're related. Stay
there."

She watched him cross to the door; turned, so that she could still
observe him and yet with one twist of the head, if any one entered,
seem to have been untouched by any curiosity.

He opened the door. It cut off his face from view; but she heard his
sudden exclamation of surprise, and allowed a thousand speculations
to travel through her brain.

"You!" he said.

"Yes," a woman's voice replied in a nervous undertone. "I came to
see you, to see if you were in. I--I wanted to see you." The words
were stilted with nervous repetitions.

"Of course, of course; come in; let me introduce you to my sister.
Oh--you must--come in--please; we've been dining together and came
on here--for coffee--"

He threw the door wide open, and Sally walked apprehensively into
the room.

CHAPTER XXI

Superficially, training is everything. The heaven-born genius comes
once in a century of decades to remind us, as it were, that there
is such a thing as creation; but beyond the heaven-born genius,
training, on a day of superficialities, must win.

This moment, when Sally stood but a few paces within Traill's room,
and looked--half-appealing, half-guardedly--at Mrs. Durlacher, the
perfect woman of society--perfectly robed, perfectly mannered,
perfectly painted, was a moment as superficial as one, so charged
with possibilities, could be. And through that moment, over it,
almost as if it were an occurrence of her daily life, Mrs. Durlacher
rode as a swallow rides on an upland wind--pinions stretched
straightly out--the consummate absence of effort; all the training
of numberless years and numberless birds of th