hly proper--very useful to him--and his wife
seemed to like it--as if she also had derived some distinct and secret
advantage from this intellectual connection. She received her mixed and
decorous guests with a kind of tall, ponderous grace, peculiarly her own
and which awakened in the mind of intimidated strangers incongruous and
improper reminiscences of an elephant, a giraffe, a gazelle; of a gothic
tower--of an overgrown angel. Her Thursdays were becoming famous in
their world; and their world grew steadily, annexing street after
street. It included also Somebody's Gardens, a Crescent--a couple of
Squares.

Thus Alvan Hervey and his wife for five prosperous years lived by the
side of one another. In time they came to know each other sufficiently
well for all the practical purposes of such an existence, but they were
no more capable of real intimacy than two animals feeding at the same
manger, under the same roof, in a luxurious stable. His longing was
appeased and became a habit; and she had her desire--the desire to get
away from under the paternal roof, to assert her individuality, to move
in her own set (so much smarter than the parental one); to have a
home of her own, and her own share of the world's respect, envy, and
applause. They understood each other warily, tacitly, like a pair of
cautious conspirators in a profitable plot; because they were both
unable to look at a fact, a sentiment, a principle, or a belief
otherwise than in the light of their own dignity, of their own
glorification, of their own advantage. They skimmed over the surface
of life hand in hand, in a pure and frosty atmosphere--like two
skilful skaters cutting figures on thick ice for the admiration of
the beholders, and disdainfully ignoring the hidden stream, the stream
restless and dark; the stream of life, profound and unfrozen.

Alvan Hervey turned twice to the left, once to the right, walked along
two sides of a square, in the middle of which groups of tame-looking
trees stood in respectable captivity behind iron railings, and rang at
his door. A parlour-maid opened. A fad of his wife's, this, to have only
women servants. That girl, while she took his hat and overcoat, said
something which made him look at his watch. It was five o'clock, and his
wife not at home. There was nothing unusual in that. He said, "No; no
tea," and went upstairs.

He ascended without footfalls. Brass rods glimmered all up the red
carpet. On the first-floor