had of himself. He behaved gratefully, didn't he?"

"Very," she said with a forced smile.

"Do you object to the manner in which he expressed his gratitude?"

She hung her head.

"No," she said.

After a while she raised her eyes, her head still lowered. He was
working, darkly absorbed as usual in the plastic mass under his
fingers.

She watched him curiously, not his hands, now, but his lean, intent
face, striving to penetrate that masculine mask, trying to
understand. Varying and odd reflections and emotions possessed her
in turn, and passed--wonder, bewilderment at herself, at him; a
slight sense of fear, then a brief and sudden access of shyness,
succeeded by the by glow of an emotion new and strange and deep. And
this, in turn, by vague bewilderment again, in which there was both
a hint of fear, and a tinge of something exquisite.

Within herself she was dimly conscious that a certain gaiety, an
irresponsibility and lightness had died out in her, perhaps
permanently, yet leaving no void. What it was that replaced these
she could not name--she only was conscious that if these had been
subdued by a newer knowledge, with a newer seriousness, this
unaccustomed gravity had left her heart no less tender, and had
deepened her capacity for emotion to depths as profound and