ghostlike, impalpable. And then he stood in the doorway, the gloom blurring his outlines like fur, the faint, clear candle-light catching the fair down on his face. He did not see me, in my dark dress, or huddled Kitty, and with the sleepy smile of one who returns to a dear, familiar place to rest he walked into the hall and laid down his stick and his khaki cap beside the candlestick on the oak table. With both hands he felt the old wood, and stood humming happily through his teeth.

I cried out, because I had seen that his hair was of three colors now, brown and gold and silver.

With a quick turn of the head, he found me out in the shadows.

"Hullo, Jenny!" he said, and gripped my hands.

"O Chris, I am so glad!" I stuttered, and then could say no more for shame that I was thirty-five instead of twenty. For his eyes had hardened in the midst of his welcome, as though he had trusted that I at least would have been no party to this conspiracy to deny that he was young, and he said:

"I've dropped Frank in town. My temper's of the convalescent type." He might as well have said, "I've dropped Frank, who had grown old, like you."

"Chris," I went on, "it's so wonderful to have you safe."

"Safe," he repeated. He sighed very deeply and continued to hold my hands. There was a rustle in the shadows, and he dropped my hands.

The face that looked out of the dimness to him was very white, and her upper lip was lifted over her teeth in a distressed grimace. It was immediately as plain as though he had shouted it that this sad mask meant nothing to him. He knew not because memory had given him any insight into her heart, but because there is an instinctive kindliness in him which makes him wise about all suffering, that it would hurt her if he asked if this was his wife; but his body involuntarily began a gesture of inquiry before he realized that that, too, would hurt her, and he checked it half-way. So, through a silence, he stood before her slightly bent, as though he had been maimed.

"I am your wife." There was a weak, wailing anger behind the words.

"Kitty," he said softly and kindly. He looked around for some graciousness to make the scene less wounding, and stooped to kiss her; but he could not. The thought of another woman made him unable to breathe, sent the blood running under his skin.

With a toss, like a child saying, "Well, if you don't want to, I'm sure I wouldn't for the world!" Kitty withdrew from the suspended caress. He watched her retreat into the shadows as though she were a symbol of this new life by which he was baffled and oppressed, until the darkness outside became filled with the sound like the surf which we always hear at Harrowweald on angry evenings, and his eyes became distant, and his lips smiled. "Up here—in this old place—how one hears the pines!"

She cried out from the other end of the room, as though she were speaking with some one behind a shut door:

"I've ordered dinner at seven. I thought you'd probably have missed a meal or two, or would want to go to bed early." She said it very smartly, with her head on one side like a bird, as if she was pleading that he would find her very clever about ordering dinner and thinking of his comfort.

"Good," he said. "I'd better dress now, hadn't I?" He looked up the stair-case, and would have gone up had I not held him back; for the little room in the south wing, with the fishing-rods and the old books, went in the rebuilding, absorbed by the black-and-white magnificence that is Kitty's bedroom.

"Oh, I'll take you up," Kitty rang out efficiently. She pulled at his coat-sleeve, so they started level on the lowest step. But as they went up, the sense of his separateness beat her back; she lifted her arms as though she struggled through a fog, and fell behind. When he reached the top she was standing half-way down the stairs, her hands clasped under her chin. But he did not see her. He was looking along the corridor and saying, "This house is different." If the soul has to stay in its coffin till the lead is struck asunder, in its captivity it speaks with such a voice.

She braced herself with a gallant laugh.

"How you've forgotten!" she cried, and ran up to him, rattling her keys and looking grave with housewifery, and I was left alone with the dusk and the familiar things. The dusk flowed in wet and cool from the garden, as if to put out the fire of confusion lighted on our hearthstone, and the furniture, very visible through that soft evening opacity with the observant brightness of old, well-polished wood, seemed terribly aware. Strangeness had come into the house, and everything was appalled by it, even time. For the moments dragged. It seemed to me, half an hour later, that I had been standing for an infinite period in the drawing-room, remembering that in the old days the blinds had never been drawn in this room because old Mrs. Baldry had liked to see the night gathering like a pool in the valley while the day lingered as a white streak above the farthest hills, and perceiving in pain that the heavy blue blinds that shroud the nine windows because a lost Zeppelin sometimes clanks like a skeleton across the sky above us would make his home seem even more like prison.

I began to say what was in my mind to Kitty when she came in, but she moved past me, remote in preoccupation, and I was silent when I saw that she was dressed in all respects like a bride. The gown she wore on her wedding-day ten years ago had been cut and embroidered as this white satin was; her hair had been coiled low on her neck, as it was now. Around her throat were her pearls, and her longer chain of diamonds dropped, looking cruelly bright, to her white, small breasts; because she held some needlework to her bosom, I saw that her right hand was stiff with rings and her left hand bare save for her wedding-ring. She dropped her load of flannel on a work-table and sat down, spreading out her skirts, in an arm-chair by the fire. With her lower lip thrust out, as if she were considering a menu, she lowered her head and looked down on herself. She frowned to see that the high lights on the satin shone scarlet from the fire, that her flesh glowed like a rose, and she changed her seat for a high-backed chair beneath the farthest candle-sconce. There were green curtains close by, and now the lights on her satin gown were green like cleft ice. She looked as cold as moonlight, as virginity, but precious; the falling candle-light struck her hair to bright, pure gold. So she waited for him.

There came suddenly a thud at the door. We heard Chris swear and stumble to his feet, while one of the servants spoke helpfully. Kitty knitted her brows, for she hates gracelessness, and a failure of physical adjustment is the worst indignity she can conceive.

"He's fallen down those three steps from the hall," I whispered. "They're new." She did not listen, because she was controlling her face into harmony with the appearance of serene virginity upon which his eyes would fall when he entered the room.

His fall had ruffled him and made him look very large and red, and he breathed hard, like an animal pursued into a strange place by night, and to his hot consciousness of his disorder the sight of Kitty, her face and hands and bosom shining like the snow, her gown enfolding her, and her gold hair crowning her with radiance, and the white fire of jewels giving passion to the spectacle, was a deep refreshment. She sat still for a time, so that he might feel this well, then raised her ringed hand to her necklaces.

"It seems so strange that you should not remember me," she said. "You gave me all these."

He answered kindly:

"I am glad I did that. You look very beautiful in them." But as he spoke his gaze shifted to the shadows in the corners of the room, and the blood ran hot under his skin. He was thinking of