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230 blue boyish eyes, which Addie had inherited from him, but which in the father looked younger, more boyish than in the son. If, at the sound of his voice, the inclination to speak to him irritably welled up in her from the eternal antagonism between them, as from a gloomy spring deep down in her, she would restrain herself, control herself with that new sympathy and pity, answer gently, almost jokingly, and would let him have the last word. And, now that she herself was in love and felt herself live again, she had a sympathy that was almost motherly for his love, even though she herself was beginning to feel young again, and with it a strange tenderness for the two of them, Marianne and Henri. She did not think of the danger for him; she still had only, in her new world of romance, a sympathy for romance. He was her husband, but she felt none of a wife's jealousy. And for Marianne she felt the same strange compassion, as for a younger sister-in-love. . ..

There came to her scarcely a fleeting thought of the immorality which the world, people, small people—the whirlers in the little circle, with their little prejudices and dogmas, their little creeds and philosophies—would see in such strange views from a married woman concerning herself and a friend, concerning her husband and the little niece with whom her husband was evidently in love. She was a small creature like all of them, she was a small soul, like