youth not altogether constant, he had become so utterly
constant where Mrs. Denby was concerned. She had a quality of
perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand of her
delicate brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her,
but it was not. It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself,
even secretly, to wonder why. Effects, fastidious and constant, were
all he demanded from life.

This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this
slow drive afterward in the park; this return by dusk to the shining
small house in the shining small street; the good-by, reticently
ardent, as if it were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return
again in the evening. Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim,
lovely, with a single gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger.
"Good-by, my dear," he would say, "you have given me the most
delightful afternoon of my life." For a moment Mrs. Denby's hand
would linger on the bowed head; then Mr. McCain would straighten up,
smile, square his shoulders in their smart, young-looking coat, and
depart to his club, or the large, softly lit house where he dwelt
alone. At dinner he would drink two glasses of champagne. Before he
drained the last sip of the second pouring he would hold the glass
up to the fire, so that the bronze coruscations at the heart of the
wine glowed like fireflies in a gold dusk. One imagined him saying
to himself: "A perfect woman! A perfect woman--God bless her!"
Saying "God bless" any one, mind you, with a distinct warming of the
heart, but a thoroughly late-Victorian disbelief in any god to bless....
At least, you thought as much.

And, of course, one had not the slightest notion whether he--old
Mr. Henry McCain--was aware that this twenty years of devotion on
his part to Mrs. Denby was the point upon which had come to focus
the not inconsiderable contempt and hatred for him of his nephew
Adrian.

It was an obvious convergence, this devotion of all the traits which
composed, so Adrian imagined, the despicable soul that lay beneath
his uncle's unangled exterior: undeviating self-indulgence; secrecy;
utter selfishness--he was selfish even to the woman he was supposed
to love; that is, if he was capable of loving any one but himself--a
bland hypocrisy; an unthinking conformation to the dictates of an
unthinking world. The list could be multiplied. But to sum it up,
here was epitomized, beautifully, concretely, the main and minor
vi