were once again seeking the back of the house, no doubt their
eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red, apexed to a questioning angle.

In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in
love and departed, but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age,
had if anything grown more faithful and exact to the moment. If he
were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that he
regretted it, that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He
was not articulate, but occasionally he expressed an idea and the
most common was that he "liked his things as he liked them";
his eggs, in other words, boiled just so long, no more--after
sixty years of inner debate on the subject he had apparently
arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs were the only kind of eggs
permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest manifestation
of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one reason why,
after a youth not altogether constant, he had become so utterly
constant where Mrs. Denby was concerned. She had a quality of
perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand of her
delicate brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her,
but it was not. It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself,
even secretly, to wonder why. Effects, fastidious and constant, were
all he demanded from life.

This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this
slow drive afterward in the park; this return by dusk to the shining
small house in the shining small street; the good-by, reticently
ardent, as if it were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return
again in the evening. Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim,
lovely, with a single gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger.
"Good-by, my dear," he would say, "you have given me the most