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 wood-winds, I should say it was as good as any performance I ever heard at the Comique.”

“How it does make one think of Paris, and of so many half-forgotten things!” his wife murmured. It had been long since he had seen her face so relaxed and reflective and undetermined. Through the next act he often glanced at her. Curious, how a young mood could return and soften a face. More than once he saw a starry moisture shine in her eyes. If she only knew how much more lovely she was when she wasn’t doing her duty!

“My dear,” he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, “it’s been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young.”

“How often I’ve thought that!” she replied with a faint, melancholy smile.

“You? But you’re so occupied with the future, you adapt yourself so readily,” he murmured in astonishment.

“One must go on living, Godfrey. But it wasn’t the children who came between us.” There was something lonely and forgiving in her voice, something that spoke of an old wound, healed and hardened and hopeless.

“You, you too?” he breathed in amazement.