with sometimes a constrained smile or two, and then, after sitting a
while in silence, he would take his hat and bid her good-evening.

She always sat nowadays in an attitude which he had never seen her adopt
in former times, her hands lying in her lap before her, and an absent
expression on her face. As he looked at her sitting thus, and recalled
her former vivacious self-assertion and ever-new caprices, he was
overcome with the sadness of the contrast.

Whenever he asked her about her health, she replied that she was well;
and, indeed, she had that appearance. Grief is slow to sap the basis of a
healthy physical constitution. She retained all the contour of cheek and
rounded fulness of figure which had first captivated his fancy in the
days, as it seemed, so long ago.

He took her often to the theatre, because in the action of the play she
seemed at times momentarily carried out of herself. Once, when they were
coming home from a play, she called attention to some feature of it. It
was the first independent remark she had made since he had brought her to
her lodgings. In itself it was of no importance at all, but he was
overcome with delight, as people are delighted with the first words that
show returning interest in earthly matters on the part of a convalescing
friend whose soul has long been hovering on the borders of death. It
would sound laughable to explain how much he made of that little remark,
how he spun it out, and turned it in and out, and returned to it for days
afterward. But it remained isolated. She did not make another.

Nevertheless, her mind was not so entirely torpid as it appeared, nor was
she so absolutely self-absorbed. One idea was rising day by day out of
the dark confusion of her thoughts, and that was the goodness and