with the Consul General . . . ."

Of such a nature was the first insidious rupture of that routine she had
grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she
had chosen for its very immutable quality. Even its pangs of loneliness
had acquired a certain sweet taste. Partly from a fear of a world that
had hurt her, partly from fear of herself, she had made her burrow deep,
that heat and cold, the changing seasons, and love and hate might be
things far removed. She had sought to remove comparisons, too, from the
limits of her vision; to cherish and keep alive, indeed, such regrets as
she had, but to make no new ones.

Often had she thought of Peter Erwin, and it is not too much to say that
he had insensibly grown into an ideal. He had come to represent to her
the great thing she had missed in life, missed by feverish searching in
the wrong places, digging for gold where the ground had glittered. And,
if the choice had been given her, she would have preferred his spiritual
to his bodily companionship--for a while, at least. Some day, when she
should feel sure that desire had ceased to throb, when she should have
acquired an unshakable and absolute resignation, she would see him. It is
not too much to say, if her feeling be not misconstrued and stretched far
beyond her own conception of it, that he was her one remaining interest
in the world. She had scanned the letters of her aunt and uncle for
knowledge of his doings, and had felt her curiosity justified by a
certain proprietorship that she did not define, faith in humankind, or
the lack of it, usually makes itself felt through one's comparative
contemporaries. That her uncle was a good man, for instance, had no such
effect upon Honora, as the fact that Peter was a good man. And that he
had held a true course had gradually become a very vital thing to her,
perhaps the most vital thing; and she could have imagined no greater
personal calamity now than to have seen him inconsistent. For there are
such men, and most people have known them. They are the men who,
unconsciously, keep life sweet.

Yet she was sorry he had invaded her hiding-place. She had not yet
achieved peace, and much of the weary task would have to be done over
after he was gone.

In the meantime she drifted with astounding ease into another existence.
For it was she, and not the confidential gentlemen, who showed Peter
Paris: not the careless, pleasure-loving Paris of the restaurants