ees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in the attitude
habitual to her in moments of inward debate.

Amherst rose and seated himself on the sofa beside her. "Dear! What is
it?" he said, drawing her hands down, so that she had to turn her face
to his.

"Nothing...I don't know...a superstition. I've been so happy here!"

"Is our happiness too perishable to be transplanted?"

She smiled and answered by another question. "You don't mind doing it,
then?"

Amherst hesitated. "Shall I tell you? I feel that it's a sort of ring of
Polycrates. It may buy off the jealous gods."

A faint shrinking from some importunate suggestion seemed to press her
closer to him. "Then you feel they _are_ jealous?" she breathed, in a
half-laugh.

"I pity them if they're not!"

"Yes," she agreed, rallying to his tone. "I only had a fancy that they
might overlook such a dull place as Hanaford."

Amherst drew her to him. "Isn't it, on the contrary, in the ash-heaps
that the rag-pickers prowl?"

* * * * *

There was no disguising it: she was growing afraid of her happiness. Her
husband's analogy of the ring expressed her fear. She seemed to herself
to carry a blazing jewel on her breast--something that singled her out
for human envy and divine pursuit. She had a preposterous longing to
dress plainly and shabbily, to subdue her voice and gestures, to try to
slip through life unnoticed; yet all the while she knew that her jewel
would shoot its rays through every disguise. And from the depths of
ancient atavistic instincts came the hope that Amherst was right--that
by sacrificing their precious solitude to Mr. Langhope's convenience
they might still deceive the gods.

* * * * *

Once pledged to her new task, Justine, as usual, espoused it with
ardour. It was pleasant, even among greater joys, to see her husband
again frankly welcomed by Mr. Langhope; to see Cicely bloom into
happiness at their coming; and to overhear Mr. Langhope exclaim, in a
confidential aside to his son-in-law: "It's wonderful, the _bien-etre_
that wife of yours diffuses about her!"

The element of _bien-etre_ was the only one in which Mr. Langhope could
draw breath; and to those who kept him immersed in it he was prodigal of
delicate attentions. The experiment, in short, was a complete success;
and even Amherst's necessary weeks at Hanaford had the merit of giving a
finer flavour to his brief appearances