for Wilkins as he crossed the room, and offered his hand first to
Gerty and then to Laura with an equally enthusiastic pressure. The clear
red was still in his face, and his eyes beamed with animation as he
stood warming himself before the fire.

"Have you been here long?" he asked, looking at his watch with a slight
frown. "By Jove, I'm a good half hour after time. What did you do with
yourselves while you cursed me?"

"First we looked at the portrait--which I hate--then we read the names
of all your silly books," responded Laura, with a dissimulation so
natural that Gerty was divided between regret for her sincerity and
admiration for her acting.

"Well, it doesn't do to quarrel not only with our bread and meat, but
with our automobiles, too," protested Kemper lightly, "It's a good thing
I've gone in for, and it all came of my riding up in the train with
Barclay to the Adirondacks--otherwise he'd have been too sharp to have
put me on to the tip." Then his rapid glance travelled to the portrait
leaning against a chair, and he put a question with the same eager
interest he had shown in the subject of mining. "So you've had time to
come to judgment on the French fellow. What do you think of him?"

"It's not you--I won't believe it," replied Laura merrily, "if he's
right, then I've been deluded into marrying the wrong man."

"Oh, he goes in for style, of course," remarked Kemper, closing one eye
as he fell back and examined the picture, "most of the French people do,
you know."

The radiance which belonged to an inner illumination rather than to any
outward flush of colour, had suffused Laura's face, until she seemed to
glow with an animation which revealed itself not only in her look and
voice, but in her whole delicate figure, so fragile, yet so full of
energy. There was something unnatural, almost feverish in the brightness
of her eyes and in the rapid gestures of her small expressive hands. To
Gerty she appeared to resemble a beautiful wild bird, helplessly beating
its wings in the fowler's net.

"But isn't their style mostly affectation as their strength is only
coarseness?" she asked eagerly, wondering as she spoke, what her words
meant and why she should have chosen these out of the whole English
language. "Isn't it truth, after all," she added, with the same excited
emphasis, "that we need in life?" It occurred to her suddenly that she
was repeating words which someone else had said before her, and she
tri