XI

Colville had not done what he meant in going to Mrs. Bowen's; in fact,

he had done just what he had not meant to do, as he distinctly perceived

in coming away. It was then that in a luminous retrospect he discovered

his motive to have been a wish to atone to her for behaviour that must

have distressed her, or at least to explain it to her. She had not let

him do this at once; an instant willingness to hear and to condone was

not in a woman's nature; she had to make him feel, by the infliction of

a degree of punishment, that she had suffered. But before she ended she

had made it clear that she was ready to grant him a tacit pardon, and he

had answered with a silly sarcasm the question that was to have led to

peace. He could not help seeing that throughout the whole Carnival

adventure she had yielded her cherished reluctances to please him, to

show him that she was not stiff or prudish, to convince him that she

would not be a killjoy through her devotion to conventionalities which

she thought he despised. He could not help seeing that he had abused her

delicate generosity, insulted her subtle concessions. He strolled along

down the Arno, feeling flat and mean, as a man always does after a

contest with a woman in which he has got the victory; our sex can

preserve its self-respect only through defeat in such a case. It gave

him no pleasure to remember that the glamour of the night before seemed

still to rest on Imogene unbroken; that, indeed, was rather an added

pain. He surprised himself in the midst of his poignant reflections by a

yawn. Clearly the time was past when these ideal troubles could keep him

awake, and there was, after all, a sort of brutal consolation in the

fact. He was forty-one years old, and he was sleepy, whatever capacity

for suffering remained to him. He went to his hotel to catch a little

nap before lunch. When he woke it was dinner-time. The mists of slumber

still hung about him, and the events of the last forty-eight hours

showed vast and shapelessly threatening through them.

When the drama of the _table d'hôte_ reached its climax of roast

chestnuts and butter, he determined to walk over to San Marco and pay a

visit to Mr. Waters. He found the old minister from Haddam East Village,

Massachusetts, Italianate outwardly in almost ludicrous degree. He wore

a fur-lined overcoat indoors; his feet, cased in thick woollen shoes,

rested on a strip of carpet laid before his table; a man who had lived

for forty years in the pungent atmosphere of an air-tight stove,

succeeding a quarter of a century of roaring hearth fires, contented

himself with the spare heat of a scaldino, which he held his clasped

hands over in the very Italian manner; the lamp that cast its light on

the book open before him was the classic _lucerna_, with three beaks,

fed with olive oil. He looked up at his visitor over his spectacles,

without recognising him, till Colville spoke. Then, after their

greeting, "Is it snowing heavily?" he asked.

"It isn't snowing at all. What made you think that?"

"Perhaps I was drowsing over my book and dreamed it. We become very

strange and interesting studies to ourselves as we live along."

He took up the metaphysical consideration with the promptness of a man

who has no small-talk, and who speaks of the mind and soul as if they

were the gossip of the neighbourhood.

"At times the forty winters that I passed in Haddam East Village seem

like an alien experience, and I find myself pitying the life I lived

there quite as if it were the life of some one else. It seems incredible

that men should still inhabit such climates."

"Then you're not homesick for Haddam East Village?"

"Ah! for the good and striving souls there, yes; especially the souls of

some women there. They used to think that it was I who gave them

consolation and spiritual purpose, but it was they who really imparted

it. Women souls--how beautiful they sometimes are! They seem truly like

angelic essences. I trust that I shall meet them somewhere some time,

but it will never be in Haddam East Village. Yes, I must have been

dreaming when you came in. I thought that I was by my fire there, and

all round over the hills and in the streets the snow was deep and

falling still. "How distinctly," he said, closing his eyes, as artists do

in looking at a picture, "I can see the black wavering lines of the walls

in the fields sinking into the drifts! the snow billowed over the graves

by the church where I preached! the banks of snow around the houses! the

white desolation everywhere! I ask myself at times if the people are

still there. Yes, I feel as blessedly remote from that terrible winter

as if I had died away from it, and were in the weather of heaven."

"Then you have no reproach for feeble-spirited fellow-citizens who

abandon their native climate and come to live in Italy?"

The old man drew his fur coat closer about him and shrugged his

shoulders in true Florentine fashion. "There may be something to say

against those who do so in the heyday of life, but I shall not be the

one to say it. The race must yet revert in its decrepitude, as I have in

mine, to the climates of the South. Since I have been in Italy I have

realised what used to occur to me dimly at home--the cruel disproportion

between the end gained and the means expended in reclaiming the savage

North. Half the human endeavour, half the human suffering, would have

made the whole South Protestant and the whole East Christian, and our

civilisation would now be there. No, I shall never go back to New

England. New England? New Ireland----New Canada! Half the farms in

Haddam are in the hands of our Irish friends, and the labour on the rest

is half done by French Canadians. That is all right and well. New

England must come to me here, by way of the great middle West and the

Pacific coast."

Colville smiled at the Emersonian touch, but he said gravely, "I can

never quite reconcile myself to the thought of dying out of my own

country."

"Why not? It is very unimportant where one dies. A moment after your

breath is gone you are in exile for ever--or at home for ever."

Colville sat musing upon this phase of Americanism, as he had upon many

others. At last he broke the silence they had both let fall, far away

from the topic they had touched.

"Well," he asked, "how did you enjoy the veglione?"

"Oh, I'm too old to go to such places for pleasure," said the minister

simply. "But it was very interesting, and certainly very striking:

especially when I went back, toward daylight, after seeing Mrs. Bowen

home."

"Did you go back?" demanded Colville, in some amaze.

"Oh yes. I felt that my experience was incomplete without some knowledge

of how the Carnival ended at such a place."

"Oh! And do you still feel that Savonarola was mistaken?"

"There seemed to be rather more boisterousness toward the close, and, if

I might judge, the excitement grew a little unwholesome. But I really

don't feel myself very well qualified to decide. My own life has been

passed in circumstances so widely different that I am at a certain

disadvantage."

"Yes," said Colville, with a smile; "I daresay the Carnival at Haddam

East Village was quite another tiling."

The old man smiled responsively. "I suppose that some of my former

parishioners might have been scandalised at my presence at a Carnival

ball, had they known the fact merely in the abstract; but in my letters

home I shall try to set it before them in an instructive light. I should

say that the worst thing about such a scene of revelry would be that it

took us too much out of our inner quiet. But I suppose the same remark

might apply to almost any form of social entertainment."

"Yes."

"But human nature is so constituted that some means of expansion must be

provided, or a violent explosion takes place. The only question is what

means are most innocent. I have been looking about," added the old man

quietly, "at the theatres lately."

"Have you?" asked Colville, opening his eyes, in suppressed surprise.

"Yes; with a view to determining the degree of harmless amusement that

may be derived from them. It's rather a difficult question. I should be

inclined to say, however, that I don't think the ballet can ever be

instrumental for good."

Colville could not deny himself the pleasure of saying, "Well, not the

highest, I suppose."

"No," said Mr. Waters, in apparent unconsciousness of the irony. "But I

think the Church has made a mistake in condemning the theatre _in toto_.

It appears to me that it might always have countenanced a certain order

of comedy, in which the motive and plot are unobjectionable. Though I

don't deny that there are moods when all laughter seems low and unworthy

and incompatible with the most advanced state of being. And I confess,"

he went on, with a dreamy thoughtfulness, "that I have very great

misgivings in regard to tragedy. The glare that it throws upon the play

of the passions--jealousy in its anguish, revenge glutting itself, envy

eating its heart, hopeless love--their nakedness is terrible. The terror

may be salutary; it may be very mischievous. I am afraid that I have

left some of my inquiries till it is too late. I seem to have no longer

the materials of judgment left in me. If I were still a young man like

you----"

"Am I still a young man?" interrupted Colville sadly.

"You are young enough to respond to the appeals that sometimes find me

silent. If I were of your age I should certainly investigate some of

these interesting problems."

"Ah, but if you become personally interested in the problems, it's as

bad as if you hadn't the materials of judgment left; you're prejudiced.

Besides, I doubt my youthfulness very much."

"You are fifty, I presume?" suggested Mr. Waters, in a leading way.

"Not very near--only too near," laughed Colville. "I'm forty-one."

"You are younger than I supposed. But I remember now that at your age I

had the same feeling which you intimate. It seemed to me then that I had

really passed the bound which separates us from the further possibility

of youth. But I've lived long enough since to know that I was mistaken.

At forty, one has still a great part of youth before him--perhaps the

richest and sweetest part. By that time the turmoil of ideas and

sensations is over; we see clearly and feel consciously. We are in a

sort of quiet in which we peacefully enjoy. We have enlarged our

perspective sufficiently to perceive things in their true proportion and

relation; we are no longer tormented with the lurking fear of death,

which darkens and embitters our earlier years; we have got into the

habit of life; we have often been ailing and we have not died. Then we

have time enough behind us to supply us with the materials of reverie

and reminiscence; the terrible solitude of inexperience is broken; we

have learned to smile at many things besides the fear of death. We ought

also to have learned pity and patience. Yes," the old man concluded, in

cheerful self-corroboration, "it is a beautiful age."

"But it doesn't look so beautiful as it is," Colville protested. "People

in that rosy prime don't produce the effect of garlanded striplings upon

the world at large. The women laugh at us; they think we are fat old

fellows; they don't recognise the slender and elegant youth that resides

in our unwieldy bulk."

"You take my meaning a little awry. Besides, I doubt if even the ground

you assume is tenable. If a woman has lived long enough to be truly

young herself, she won't find a man at forty either decrepit or

grotesque. He can even make himself youthful to a girl of thought and

imagination."

"Yes," Colville assented, with a certain discomfort.

"But to be truly young at forty," resumed Mr. Waters, "a man should be

already married."

"Yes?"

"I sometimes feel," continued the old man, "that I made a mistake in

yielding to a disappointment that I met with early in life, and in not

permitting myself the chance of retrieval. I have missed a beautiful and

consoling experience in my devotion to a barren regret."

Colville said nothing, but he experienced a mixed feeling of amusement,

of repulsion, and of curiosity at this.

"We are put into the world to be of it. I am more and more convinced of

that. We have scarcely a right to separate ourselves from the common lot

in any way. I justify myself for having lived alone only as a widower

might. I--lost her. It was a great while ago."

"Yes," said Colville, after the pause which ensued; "I agree with you

that one has no right to isolate himself, to refuse his portion of the

common lot; but the effects of even a rebuff may last so long that one

has no heart to put out his hand a second time--for a second rap over

the knuckles. Oh, I know how trivial it is in the retrospect, and how

what is called a disappointment is something to be humbly grateful for

in most cases; but for a while it certainly makes you doubtful whether

you were ever really intended to share the common lot." He was aware of

an insincerity in his words; he hoped that it might not be perceptible,

but he did not greatly care.

Mr. Waters took no notice of what he had been saying. He resumed from

another point. "But I should say that it would be unwise for a man of

mature life to seek his happiness with one much younger than himself. I

don't deny that there are cases in which the disparity of years counts

for little or nothing, but generally speaking, people ought to be as

equally mated in age as possible. They ought to start with the same

advantages of ignorance. A young girl can only live her life through a

community of feeling, an equality of inexperience in the man she gives

her heart to. If he is tired of things that still delight her, the

chances of unhappiness are increased."

"Yes, that's true," answered Colville gravely. "It's apt to be a mistake

and a wrong."

"Oh, not always--not always," said the old minister. "We mustn't look at

it in that way quite. Wrongs are of the will." He seemed to lapse into a

greater intimacy of feeling with Colville. "Have you seen Mrs. Bowen

to-day? Or--ah! true! I think you told me."

"No," said Colville. "Have we spoken of her? But I have seen her."

"And was the little one well?"

"Very much better."

"Pretty creatures, both of them," said the minister, with as fresh a

pleasure in his recognition of the fact as if he had not said nearly the

same thing once before, "You've noticed the very remarkable resemblance

between mother and daughter?"

"Oh yes."

"There is a gentleness in Mrs. Bowen which seems to me the last

refinement of a gracious spirit," suggested Mr. Waters. "I have never

met any lady who reconciled more exquisitely what is charming in society

with what is lovely in nature."

"Yes," said Colville. "Mrs. Bowen always had that gentle manner. I used

to know her here as a girl a great while ago."

"Did you? I wonder you allowed her to become Mrs. Bowen."

This sprightliness of Mr. Waters amused Colville greatly. "At that time

I was preoccupied with my great mistake, and I had no eyes for Mrs.

Bowen."

"It isn't too late yet," said Mr. Waters, with open insinuation.

A bachelor of forty is always flattered by any suggestion of marriage;

the suggestion that a beautiful and charming woman would marry him is

too much for whatever reserves of modesty and wisdom he may have stored

up Colville took leave of the old minister in better humour with himself

than he had been for forty-eight hours, or than he had any very good

reason for being now.

Mr. Waters came with him to the head of the stairs and held up the lamp

for him to see. The light fell upon the white locks thinly straggling

from beneath his velvet skull-cap, and he looked like some mediaeval

scholar of those who lived and died for learning in Florence when

letters were a passion there almost as strong as love.

The next day Colville would have liked to go at once and ask about

Effie, but upon the whole he thought he would not go till after he had

been at the reception where he was going in the afternoon. It was an

artist who was giving the reception; he had a number of pictures to

show, and there was to be tea. There are artists and artists. This

painter was one who had a distinct social importance. It was felt to be

rather a nice thing to be asked to his reception; one was sure at least

to meet the nicest people.

This reason prevailed with Colville so far as it related to Mrs. Bowen,

whom he felt that he would like to tell he had been there. He would

speak to her of this person and that--very respected and recognised

social figures,--so that she might see he was not the outlaw, the

Bohemian, he must sometimes have appeared to her. It would not be going

too far to say that something like an obscure intention to show himself

the next Sunday at the English chapel, where Mrs. Bowen went, was not

forming itself in his mind. As he went along it began to seem not

impossible that she would be at the reception. If Effie's indisposition

was no more serious than it appeared yesterday, very probably Mrs. Bowen

would be there. He even believed that he recognised her carriage among

those which were drawn up in front of the old palace, under the

painter's studio windows.

There were a great number of people of the four nationalities that

mostly consort in Italy. There were English and Americans and Russians

and the sort of Italians resulting from the native intermarriages with

them; here and there were Italians of pure blood, borderers upon the

foreign life through a literary interest, or an artistic relation, or a

matrimonial intention; here and there, also, the large stomach of a

German advanced the bounds of the new empire and the new ideal of duty.

There were no Frenchmen; one may meet them in more strictly Italian

assemblages, but it is as if the sorrows and uncertainties of France in

these times discouraged them from the international society in which

they were always an infrequent element. It is not, of course, imaginable

that as Frenchmen they have doubts of their merits, but that they have

their misgivings as to the intelligence of others. The language that

prevailed was English--in fact, one heard no other,--and the tea which

our civilisation carries everywhere with it steamed from the cups in all

hands. This beverage, in fact, becomes a formidable factor in the life

of a Florentine winter. One finds it at all houses, and more or less

mechanically drinks it.

"I am turning out a terrible tea toper," said Colville, stirring his cup

in front of the old lady whom his relations to the ladies at Palazzo

Pinti had interested so much. "I don't think I drink less than ten cups

a day; seventy cups a week is a low average for me. I'm really beginning

to look down at my boots a little anxiously."

Mrs. Amsden laughed. She had not been in America for forty years, but

she liked the American way of talking better than any other. "Oh, didn't

you hear about Inglehart when he was here? He was so good-natured that

he used to drink all the tea people offered him, and then the young

ladies made tea for him in his studio when they went to look at his

pictures. It almost killed him. By the time spring came he trembled so

that the brush flew out of his hands when he took it up. He had to hurry

off to Venice to save his life. It's just as bad at the Italian houses;

they've learned to like tea."

"When I was here before, they never offered you anything but coffee,"

said Colville. "They took tea for medicine, and there was an old joke

that I thought I should die of, I heard it so often about the Italian

that said to the English woman when she offered him tea, '_Grazie; sto

bene_.'"

"Oh, that's all changed now."

"Yes; I've seen the tea, and I haven't heard the joke."

The flavour of Colville's talk apparently encouraged his companion to

believe that he would like to make fun of their host's paintings with

her; but whether he liked them, or whether he was principled against

that sort of return for hospitality, he chose to reply seriously to some

ironical lures she threw out.

"Oh, if you're going to be good," she exclaimed, "I shall have nothing

more to say to you. Here comes Mr. Thurston; I can make _him_ abuse the

pictures. There! You had better go away to a young lady I see alone over

yonder, though I don't know what you will do with _one_ alone." She

laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch and lively,

but that was now puckery and infirm--it is affecting to see these things

in women--and welcomed the old gentleman who came up and superseded

Colville.

The latter turned, with his cup still in his hand, and wandered about

through the company, hoping he might see Mrs. Bowen among the groups

peering at the pictures or solidly blocking the view in front of them.

He did not find her, but he found Imogene Graham standing somewhat apart

near a window. He saw her face light up at sight of him, and then darken

again as he approached.

"Isn't this rather an unnatural state of things?" he asked when he had

come up. "I ought to be obliged to fight my way to you through

successive phalanxes of young men crowding round with cups of tea

outstretched in their imploring hands. Have you had some tea?"

"Thank you, no; I don't wish any," said the young girl, so coldly that

he could not help noticing, though commonly he was man enough to notice

very few things.

"How is Effie to-day?" he asked quickly.

"Oh, quite well," said Imogene.

"I don't see Mrs. Bowen," he ventured further.

"No," answered the girl, still very lifelessly; "I came with Mrs.

Fleming." She looked about the room as if not to look at him.

He now perceived a distinct intention to snub him. He smiled. "Have you

seen the pictures? There are two or three really lovely ones."

"Mrs. Fleming will be here in a moment, I suppose," said Imogene

evasively, but not with all her first coldness.

"Let us steal a march on her," said Colville briskly. "When she comes

you can tell her that I showed you the pictures."

"I don't know," faltered the girl.

"Perhaps it isn't necessary you should," he suggested.

She glanced at him with questioning trepidation.

"The respective duties of chaperone and _protégée_ are rather undefined.

Where the chaperone isn't there to command, the _protégée_ isn't there

to obey. I suppose you'd know if you were at home?"

"Oh yes!"

"Let me imagine myself at a loan exhibition in Buffalo. Ah! that appeal

is irresistible. You'll come, I see."

She hesitated; she looked at the nearest picture, then followed him to

another. He now did what he had refused to do for the old lady who

tempted him to it; he made fun of the pictures a little, but so amiably

and with so much justice to their good points that the painter himself

would not have minded his jesting. From time to time he made Imogene

smile, but in her eyes lurked a look of uneasiness, and her manner

expressed a struggle against his will which might have had its pathos

for him in different circumstances, but now it only incited him to make

her forget herself more and more; he treated her as one does a child

that is out of sorts--coaxingly, ironically.

When they had made the round of the rooms Mrs. Fleming was not at the

window where she had left Imogene; the girl detected the top of her

bonnet still in the next room.

"The chaperone is never there when you come back with the _protégée_,"

said Colville. "It seems to be the nature of the chaperone."

Imogene turned very grave. "I think I ought to go to her," she murmured.

"Oh no; she ought to come to you; I stand out for _protégée_'s rights."

"I suppose she will come directly."

"She sees me with you; she knows you are safe."

"Oh, of course," said the girl. After a constraint which she marked by

rather a long silence, she added, "How strange a roomful of talking

sounds, doesn't it? Just like a great caldron boiling up and bubbling

over. Wouldn't you like to know what they're all saying?"

"Oh, it's quite bad enough to see them," replied Colville frivolously.

"I think a company of gentlemen with their hats off look very queer,

don't you?" she asked, after another interval.

"Well, really," said Colville, laughing, "I don't know that the

spectacle ever suggested any metaphysical speculations to me. I rather

think they look queerer with their hats on."

"Oh yes."

"Though there is not very much to choose. We're a queer-looking set,

anyway."

He got himself another cup of tea, and coming back to her, allowed her

to make the efforts to keep up the conversation, and was not without a

malicious pleasure in her struggles. They interested him as social

exercises which, however abrupt and undexterous now, were destined, with

time and practice, to become the finesse of a woman of society, and to

be accepted, even while they were still abrupt and undexterous, as

touches of character. He had broken up that coldness with which she had

met him at first, and now he let her adjust the fragments as she could

to the new situation. He wore that air of a gentleman who has been

talking a long time to a lady, and who will not dispute her possession

with a new-comer.

But no one came, though, as he cast his eyes carelessly over the

company, he found that it had been increased by the accession of eight

or ten young fellows, with a refreshing light of originality in their

faces, and little touches of difference from the other men in their

dress.

"Oh, there are the Inglehart boys!" cried the girl, with a flash of

excitement.

There was a sensation of interest and friendliness in the company as

these young fellows, after their moment of social intimidation, began to

gather round the pictures, and to fling their praise and blame about,

and talk the delightful shop of the studio.

The sight of their fresh young faces, the sound of their voices, struck

a pang of regret that was almost envy to Colville's heart.

Imogene followed them with eager eyes. "Oh," she sighed, "shouldn't you

like to be an artist?"

"I should, very much."

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I forgot. I knew you were an architect."

"I should say I used to be, if you hadn't objected to my perfects and

preterits."

What came next seemed almost an accident.

"I didn't suppose you cared for my objections, so long as I amused you."

She suddenly glanced at him, as if terrified at her own words.

"Have you been trying to amuse me?" he asked.

"Oh no. I thought----"

"Oh, then," said Colville sharply, "you meant that I was amusing myself

with you?" She glanced at him in terror of his divination, but could not

protest. "Has any one told you that?" he pursued, with sudden angry

suspicion.

"No, _no_ one," began Imogene. She glanced about her, frightened. They

stood quite alone where they were; the people had mostly wandered off

into the other rooms. "Oh, don't--I didn't mean--I didn't intend to say

anything----"

"But you have said something--something that surprises me from _you_,

and hurts me. I wish to know whether you say it from yourself."

"I don't know--yes. That is, not----Oh, I wish Mrs. Fleming----"

She looked as if another word of pursuit would put it beyond her power

to control herself.

"Let me take you to Mrs. Fleming," said Colville, with freezing

_hauteur_; and led the way where the top of Mrs. Fleming's bonnet still

showed itself. He took leave at once, and hastily parting with his host,

found himself in the street, whirled in many emotions. The girl had not

said that from herself, but it was from some woman; he knew that by the

directness of the phrase and its excess, for he had noticed that women

who liked to beat about the bush in small matters have a prodigious

straightforwardness in more vital affairs, and will even call grey black

in order clearly to establish the presence of the black in that colour.

He could hardly keep himself from going to Palazzo Pinti.

But he contrived to go to his hotel instead, where he ate a moody

dinner, and then, after an hour's solitary bitterness in his room, went

out and passed the evening at the theatre. The play was one of those

fleering comedies which render contemptible for the time all honest and

earnest intention, and which surely are a whiff from the bottomless pit

itself. It made him laugh at the serious strain of self-question that

had mingled with his resentment; it made him laugh even at his

resentment, and with its humour in his thoughts, sent him off to sleep

in a sottish acceptance of whatever was trivial in himself as the only

thing that was real and lasting.

He slept late, and when Paolo brought up his breakfast, he brought with

it a letter which he said had been left with the porter an hour before.

A faint appealing perfume of violet exhaled from the note, and mingled

with the steaming odours of the coffee and boiled milk, when Colville,

after a glance at the unfamiliar handwriting of the superscription,

broke the seal.

"DEAR MR. COLVILLE,--I don't know what you will think of my writing to

you, but perhaps you can't think worse of me than you do already, and

anything will be better than the misery that I am in. I have not been

asleep all night. I hate myself for telling you, but I do want you to

understand how I have felt. I would give worlds if I could take back the

words that you say wounded you. I didn't mean to wound you. Nobody is to

blame for them but me; nobody ever breathed a word about you that was

meant in unkindness.

"I am not ashamed of writing this, _whatever_ you think, and I will sign

my name in full. IMOGENE GRAHAM."

Colville had commonly a good appetite for his breakfast, but now he let

his coffee stand long un-tasted. There were several things about this

note that touched him--the childlike simplicity and directness, the

generous courage, even the imperfection and crudity of the literature.

However he saw it afterward, he saw it then in its true intention. He

respected that intention; through all the sophistications in which life

had wrapped him, it awed him a little. He realised that if he had been

younger he would have gone to Imogene herself with her letter. He felt

for the moment a rush of the emotion which he would once not have

stopped to examine, which he would not have been capable of examining.

But now his duty was clear; he must go to Mrs. Bowen. In the noblest

human purpose there is always some admixture, however slight, of less

noble motive, and Colville was not without the willingness to see

whatever embarrassment she might feel when he showed her the letter, and

to invoke her finest tact to aid him in re-assuring the child.

She was alone in her drawing-room, and she told him in response to his

inquiry for their health that Imogene and Effie had gone out to drive.

She looked so pretty in the quiet house dress in which she rose from the

sofa and stood, letting him come the whole way to greet her, that he did

not think of any other look in her, but afterward he remembered an

evidence of inner tumult in her brightened eyes.

He said, smiling, "I'm so glad to see you alone," and this brought still

another look into her face, which also he afterward remembered. She did

not reply, but made a sound in her throat like a bird when it stirs

itself for flight or song. It was a strange, indefinite little note, in

which Colville thought he detected trepidation at the time, and recalled

for the sort of expectation suggested in it. She stood waiting for him

to go on.

"I have come to get you to help me out of trouble."

"Yes?" said Mrs. Bowen, with a vague smile. "I always supposed you would

be able to help yourself out of trouble. Or perhaps wouldn't mind it if

you were in it."

"Oh yes, I mind it very much," returned Colville, refusing her banter,

if it were banter. "Especially this sort of trouble, which involves some

one else in the discomfort." He went on abruptly: "I have been held up

to a young lady as a person who was amusing himself with her, and I was

so absurd as to be angry when she told me, and demanded the name of my

friend, whoever it was. My behaviour seems to have given the young lady

a bad night, and this morning she writes to tell me so, and to take all

the blame on herself, and to assure me that no harm was meant me by any

one. Of course I don't want her to be distressed about it. Perhaps you

can guess who has been writing to me."

Colville said all this looking down, in a fashion he had. When he looked

up he saw a severity in Mrs. Bowen's pretty face, such as he had not

seen there before.

"I didn't know she had been writing to you, but I know that you are

talking of Imogene. She told me what she had said to you yesterday, and

I blamed her for it, but I'm not sure that it wasn't best."

"Oh, indeed!" said Colville. "Perhaps you can tell me who put the idea

into her head?"

"Yes; I did."

A dead silence ensued, in which the fragments of the situation broken by

these words revolved before Colville's thought with kaleidoscopic

variety, and he passed through all the phases of anger, resentment,

wounded self-love, and accusing shame.

At last, "I suppose you had your reasons," he said simply.

"I am in her mother's place here," she replied, tightening the grip of

one little hand upon another, where she held them laid against the side

of her waist.

"Yes, I know that," said Colville; "but what reason had you to warn her

against me as a person who was amusing himself with her? I don't like

the phrase; but she seems to have got it from you; I use it at third

hand."

"I don't like the phrase either; I didn't invent it."

"You used it."

"No; it wasn't I who used it. I should have been glad to use another, if

I could," said Mrs. Bowen, with perfect steadiness.

"Then you mean to say that you believe I've been trifling with the

feelings of this child?"

"I mean to say nothing. You are very much older; and she is a romantic

girl, very extravagant. You have tried to make her like you."

"I certainly have. I have tried to make Effie Bowen like me too."

Mrs. Bowen passed this over in serenity that he felt was not far from

contempt.

He gave a laugh that did not express enjoyment.

"You have no right to laugh!" she cried, losing herself a little, and so

making her first gain upon him.

"It appears not. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do about this

letter?"

"That is for you to decide." She recovered herself, and lost ground with

him in proportion.

"I thought perhaps that since you were able to judge my motives so

clearly, you might be able to advise me."

"I don't judge your motives," Mrs. Bowen began. She added suddenly, as

if by an after-thought, "I don't think you had any."

"I'm obliged to you."

"But you are as much to blame as if you had."

"And perhaps I'm as much to blame as if I had really wronged somebody?"

"Yes."

"It's rather paradoxical. You don't wish me to see her any more?"

"I haven't any wish about it; you must not _say_ that I have," said Mrs.

Bowen, with dignity.