rely beautiful because of some moral
quality it contained or suggested. More than a whole essay of Emerson's
did this mere sound suggest friendship. The leaves of the book of this
woman's attractions were being turned one by one for Isaacson. And of
all her attractions her voice perhaps was the greatest.

The waiter came in with tea. When he had gone, the Doctor could speak.

But he scarcely knew what to say. Very seldom was his self-possession
disturbed. To-day he felt at a disadvantage. The depression, perhaps
chiefly physical, which had lately been brooding over him, and which had
become acute at the concert, deepened about him to-day, made him feel
morally small. Mrs. Chepstow's cheerfulness seemed like height. For a
moment in all ways she towered above him, and even her bodily height
seemed like a mental triumph, or a triumph of her will over his.

"But this is only autumn," he said.

"We can pretend it is winter."

She gave him his cup of tea, with the same gesture that had charmed
Nigel on the day when he first visited her. Then she handed him a plate
with little bits of lemon on it.

"I've found out your tastes, you see. I know you never take milk."

He was obliged to feel grateful. Yet something in him longed to refuse
the lemon, the something that never ceased from denouncing her. He
uttered the right banality:

"How good of you to bother about me!"

"But you bother about me, and on your only free day! Don't you think I
am grateful to you?"

There was no mockery in her voice. Today her irony was concealed, but,
like a carefully-covered fire, he knew it was burning still. And because
it was covered he resented it. He resented this comedy they were
playing, the insincerity into which she was smilingly leading him. She
could not imagine that she deceived him. She was far too clever for
that. Then what was the good of it all?--that she had put him, that she
kept him, at a disadvantage.

She handed him the muffins. She ministered to him as if she wanted to
pet him. Again he had to feel grateful. Even in acute dislike men must
be conscious of real charm in a woman. And Isaacson did not know how to
ignore anything that was beautiful. Had the Devil come to him--with a
grace, he must have thought, "How graceful is the Devil!" Now he was
charmed by her gesture. Nevertheless, being a man of will, and, in the
main, a man who was very sincere, he called up his hard resolutions, and
said:

"No, I don't think