r palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have
accomplished this end so well as they.

He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the matter as she,
but hoping that the soft, warm infolding would somehow do him good. He
had come in the rather desperate hope of being done good to. As he had
been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to
follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill--feeling, at
the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and
apprehensive of worse things--that he had been on the point of giving it
up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had
impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his
thoughts than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he
would naturally feel better. Aurora's house during the days of painting
the first portrait had come to feel remarkably like home to him.

So when Aurora released his hand, saying, "Let's have the other," he
docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly thawed it.
Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands,
which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and
give away money.

Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to
signify that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to,
but here was his sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that,
as she intimated, he had had a share in making them flow.

"So you are all alone this evening?" he asked in the voice that makes
whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting.

"Yes. I haven't even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the foot of
her bed. She's perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in her own
corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of time."

"And where is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?" he inquired,
with a smile meant to draw from her a smile.

She was caught without difficulty. "The gifted Checkerberry hasn't been
round lately," she smiled. "He won't expose himself to the night air for
some time. He's got laryngitis so he can't talk above a whisper." Her
eye twinkled and she laughed, though what she communicated was not on
the face of it very funny.

He was perhaps calling attention to this when he said, "Poor devil!"

"Yes," she agreed, achieving sobriety, "it's bad weather for
laryngitis," and went on with the weather, dropping Italo. "I