nvying Polly in the great
drawing-room? The rain pours in torrents, but it is a divine summer
within.

"Violet," he says, a long while afterward, "we have never been real
lovers, you know. I am not sure but it would be better for me to go
abroad. We could write letters, and you could decide how much you
cared."

She glances up in a dismay so wild that he feels inclined to laugh in
pure joy. She studies out the meaning: it is for _her_ to say whether
he shall go or not.

"Oh, I shall keep you here! I shall be jealous and exigeant like Polly,
and you----"

She is the bright-eyed, sunny-faced girl he found on the rocky shore,
and there is the same buoyant ring in her voice.

"I shall be a jealous, tyrannical husband," he rejoins, giving the
rose-leaf cheek a soft pinch. "You will hardly dare dream your soul is
your own."

"No, I shall not dream it," she answers, with gay audacity.

John Latimer is greatly disappointed, as well as the professor, at
Grandon's defection. There is a charming dinner party at the Latimers',
and Mrs. Latimer dolefully declares that she must be the single spear
of grass. The following Saturday the friends go to see the travellers
off. Gertrude may remain abroad several years, "Unless," says the
professor, "I grow homesick for my little cottage among the cliffs and
my good Denise."

If her husband's eyes study all the changes that make Violet's face
radiant and fascinating, some other eyes watch them with a vague
suspicion. Has the chasm been bridged over? Has the man found the
chords of his own soul, and united them in the divine melody to which
exceptional lives are set? He may have friends among women, for he is
chivalrous, high-minded, and attractive, but he will never need any
_one_ friend greater than the rest. There is no secret niche for her,
they are all open-columned temples, that the world may see, except the
Holy of Holies where he will keep his wife.

The world is all before Madame Lepelletier. She can marry well, if she
chooses, she can make a charmed circle for herself if she so elects,
but she feels strangely old and _ennuied_, as if she must have lived in
centuries past, and there was no new thing. Yet the face in the mirror
does not tell that story. How curiously she has come into the lives of
these Grandons a second time, and gone out with as little result. Is
the stone of Sisyphus the veiled myth of life?

Violet and Grandon are not unblushing lovers like Polly and