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 ing, as a connoisseur in art is delighted, he supposed, by the blent tones and faded coloring of a lovely old piece of brocade. Even her physical weariness, her inability to walk very far without frequent rests; the way she had, sometimes, when sitting on the hotel verandah in her rocking-chair, unaware of observation, of closing her eyes, and letting her hands hang limp and lifeless, appealed to him in some strange way. A flower drooping—a—sailboat beached—a child tired.

Amazing, that her languishing loveliness should so stir his imagination! Well, she mustn't guess it. She was so sure his interest was purely impersonal, indulged in carelessly, without reserve, because so safe. She trusted him implicitly. Well, he trusted himself, didn't he? He wasn't a boy, nor a young man, either, any more. She wasn't a girl. Thirty-five—thirty-eight—older, perhaps. He wasn't good at ages. Married. Three children. And the sort of married woman to whom, he felt sure, it would not be happiness, but only shock and pain, to be tempted from out of the path of her ideals for even a harmless détour, however steep and difficult that path proved to be.

Was it steep and difficult? She had told so few facts about herself. What sort of a home had she? What sort of a life did she lead there? Gardened a good deal, he guessed, to judge from her hands when