Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/15



EBLE EVELEY'S voice, rising and falling in graceful patterns, had lulled his wife's mind into a tranquil remoteness. She had got more from the sinuosity of the sentences he was reading than from the thesis they upheld. Walter Pater had so little to tell her that she needed to know. This vaguely chagrined her, for Keble thought highly of Pater; Pater and he had something in common, something impeccable and elusive, something—

She checked her musings in alarm at the menacing word "affected."

Was it affectation on Keble's part? Or was there perhaps a winnowed level of civilization thousands of miles east of these uncouth hills and beyond the sea where precious phrases like Pater's and correct manners like Keble's were matter of course? In any such milieu what sort of figure could she hope to cut?

No doubt a pitiful one. And her thoughts drifted wistfully but resignedly down the stream of consciousness.

It was not the first time she had failed to keep