re is
nothing sacred about scrubbing the floor." Or on another day, "I wonder
if it's a twist of the absurd mediaeval ascetic perversity left over?"
Or again, "All it does for me is to take off the curse of belonging to
the bourgeoisie." But no matter what skeptical name she called it, nor
how much she minimized the reality of it, she felt some odd value in it
which she would not have gone without. Once she said to herself, "It's
ballast, to a person like me," although she did not know exactly what
this meant. And another time she said, "Perhaps it's that I'm making an
honest effort to do my share." But it was true and real, the fact that
after such work the reading of the day's news of the world brought her a
less oppressive sense of guilt. And stranger than this, music had
greater vitality for her. She felt it a deeper, richer soil than even
she had dreamed of, and struck her roots profoundly into depths which
kept her whole complicated organism poised, steady, and upright.

And here it was that Vincent came back. Not the Vincent of the hawk-like
imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had seemed to him his
realest self. But the Vincent who had come in from the porch that day in
March when she had first played to him, who had smiled at her, the good,
grateful, peaceful smile, and had said to her music, "Go on, go on." It
was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty's garden when the
vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace.
Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and
said, "Go on." And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she
welcomed him.

This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his
smoky, flaming brilliance.

V

December.

They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their names and
stories, she and Neale and the children. Presently interest overcoming
inertia they decided to go out and see if the clouds had blown away so
that the stars could be seen. They huddled on hastily found wraps,
thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled overshoes, and leaving the
still, warm, lamp-lit room, they shuffled out, laughing and talking,
into the snow which lay thick and still before the house.

At first they carried out between them so much of the house atmosphere
that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them from the fiercely
pure, still cold of the air, and from the brilliant glitter of the
m