ad slowly, till everybody was wrapped in it.

Then Evey protested. She wanted to know why Cornelia allowed their
evenings to be blighted thus. "Why ask Mrs. Wilkinson?"

"I wouldn't," said Cornelia, "if there was any other way of getting
him."

"Well," said Evey, "he's nice enough, but it's rather a large price
to have to pay."

"And is he," cried Cornelia passionately, "to be cut off from
everything because of that one terrible mistake?"

Evey said nothing. If Cornelia were going to take him that way,
there was nothing to be said!

So Mrs. Norman went on drawing Wilkinson out more and more, till one
Sunday afternoon, sitting beside her on the sofa, he emerged
positively splendid. There were moments when he forgot about his
wife.

They had been talking together about his blessed Troubadours. (It
was wonderful the interest Mrs. Norman took in them!) Suddenly his
gentleness and sadness fell from him, a flame sprang up behind his
spectacles, and the something that slept or dreamed in Wilkinson
awoke. He was away with Mrs. Norman in a lovely land, in Provence of
the thirteenth century. A strange chant broke from him; it startled
Evey, where she sat at the other end of the room. He was reciting
his own translation of a love-song of Provence.

At the first words of the refrain his wife, who had never ceased
staring at him, got up and came across the room. She touched his
shoulder just as he was going to say "Ma mie."

"Come, Peter," she said, "it's time to be going home."

Wilkinson rose on his long legs. "Ma mie," he said, looking down at
her; and the flaming dream was still in his eyes behind his
spectacles.

He took the little cloak she held out to him, a pitiful and rather
vulgar thing. He raised it with the air of a courtier handling a
royal robe; then he put it on her, smoothing it tenderly about her
shoulders.

Mrs. Norman followed them to the porch. As he turned to her on the
step, she saw that his eyes were sad, and that his face, as she put
it, had gone to sleep again.

When she came back to her sister, her own eyes shone and her face
was rosy.

"Oh, Evey," she said, "isn't it beautiful?"

"Isn't what beautiful?"

"Mr. Wilkinson's behavior to his wife."

II

It was not an easy problem that Mrs. Norman faced. She wished to
save Wilkinson; she also wished to save the character of her
Fridays, which Wilkinson's wife had already done her best to
destroy. Mrs. Norman could not think why the w