It was a long time since he
had referred to the early days of their friendship--the days
_before_....

"Yes, I remember," she said.

"And do you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it was
with Faust? That the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not, in most
lives, the moment of keenest personal happiness, but the other kind--the
kind that would have seemed grey and colourless at first: the moment
when the meaning of life began to come out from the mists--when one
could look out at last over the marsh one had drained?"

A tremor ran through Justine. "It was you who said that," she said,
half-smiling.

"But didn't you feel it with me? Don't you now?"

"Yes--I do now," she murmured.

He came close to her, and taking her hands in his, kissed them one after
the other.

"Dear," he said, "let us go out and look at the marsh we have drained."

He turned and led her through the open doorway to the terrace above the
river. The sun was setting behind the wooded slopes of Hopewood, and the
trees about the house stretched long blue shadows across the lawn.
Beyond them rose the smoke of Westmore.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| BOOKS BY EDITH WHARTON |
| |
| PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS |
| |
| * * * * * |
| |
| [12 mo. $1.50] |
| |
| The House of Mirth |
| |
| _Illustrations by_ A. B. WENZELL |
| |
| "In my judgment 'The House of Mirth' is a story of such |
| vitality, of such artistic and moral insight, that it will |
| stand by itself in American fiction as a study of a certain |
| kind of society. The title is a stroke of genius in irony, |
| and gives the key to a novel of absorbing interest, as |
| relentless as life itself in its judgment, but deeply and |
| beautifully humanized