st and strongest of women can
delight in vanities, so Marie delighted in the earrings which she wore
to-night, as an inspiration, for the first time.

From her dining-room Marie went to the sitting-room, rosy in the light
of another wood fire. Every day now she used her sitting-room. Tea was
brought to her there, placed at her elbow as she sat in a cosy chair
before the fire, and she drank it at leisure--while the maid gave the
children their meal in the dining-room. In that chair by the fire, all
the spring, Marie had read the new books, for she could afford to pay
a library subscription. In that chair, as she rested, the lines had
smoothed from her face, her neck had grown plump again, and the
stories of modern thought, of modern love and its ways, had stimulated
her brain once more to thoughts of its own. She loved the sitting-room
better than she had loved it even when it was first furnished; it was
now peculiarly her own. When she thought of Osborn's return, as she
did now and then with a curious mixture of feelings, she knew,
half-guiltily, that somehow she would grudge him a share in those
pleasant evenings by the fire.

Marie sat down to wait for Julia and Desmond, and, taking up her
half-finished novel, put her silk-stockinged feet on the fender,
leaned back, and opened the book at the place where she had left the
story. It was a love story, and as she read she thought: "How well I
know this phase! and that phase!... but we will just see what happens
after they're married." Her thought was not bitter, only interested
and curious, because her own hurt was over, and a wisdom, a
contentment, had come.

Julia and Desmond arrived together, much against Julia's will; and
they all sat down in the pretty pale room, while the maid drew the
curtains upon the gathering dusk and switched on the light.

They sat and talked of trivial things, waiting for the serving of
dinner to be announced; and Marie remembered how often, in the past
years, she had longed to sit there comfortably, thus till a
well-trained servant should open the door noiselessly and say: "Dinner
is served, ma'am."

Now it happened every night.

They went in to a well-ordered dinner; there was a pleasant peace and
harmony in the flat; and as Rokeby looked at Marie's face, which had
won back all its old prettiness, as well as attaining the strength of
the woman who has suffered, he did not marvel, but he was a little
sad. And he wondered slightly jus