her a nasty, mean thing!" exclaimed Aurora.

Leslie shrugged her shoulders, as if saying: "Have it your way; but a
more philosophical view is possible."

"She was looking very beautiful," she went on. "Much more beautiful than
before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has become
opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and,
kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies."

"I should think she would have been ashamed to come back here."

"Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to
those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence
did not really like it, because she affected toward Florence the
attitude of one who comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You
would have thought Florence an amusing little hole where she long ago,
by some accident, had spent a month or two. She found us quaint,
provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She criticized us
with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we were
funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent
one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic."

"Antip--I call it the actions of a _bug!_"

"You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was
obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been.
Comforting knowledge, isn't it, that for years you have treasured
memories that had no reality to start from; that you have suffered
agonies of love without any real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A
tragedy that is shown to have been all along a farce! To a man of
imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you can see what it would
mean. You can see what it would leave behind it."

"I should think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget
her as she deserves."

"Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an
empty hollow where your beautiful hoard of pure gold was stored is a
thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now,
certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into
the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and
sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much
alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they
are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie
said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular