“I thought your calls were going to take till dinner, Myron,” called Harrie, through the blinds.

“I thought so too,” said Myron, placidly, “but they do not seem to.  Won’t you come down?”

Harrie thanked him, saying, in a pleasant nonchalant way, that she could not leave the baby.  It was almost the first bit of acting that the child had ever been guilty of,—­for the baby was just going to sleep, and she knew it.

She turned away from the window quietly.  She could not have been angry, and scolded; or noisy, and cried.  She put little Harrie into her cradle, crept upon the bed, and lay perfectly still for a long time.

When the dinner-bell rang, and she got up to brush her hair, that absent, apathetic look of which I have spoken had left her eyes.  A stealthy brightness came and went in them, which her husband might have observed if he and Miss Dallas had not been deep in the Woman question.  Pauline saw it; Pauline saw everything.

“Why did you not come down and sit with us this morning?” she asked, reproachfully, when she and Harrie were alone after dinner.  “I don’t want your husband to feel that he must run away from you to entertain me.”

“My husband’s ideas of hospitality are generous,” said Mrs. Sharpe.  “I have always found him as ready to make it pleasant here for my company as for his own.”

She made this little speech with dignity.  Did both women know it for the farce it was?  To do Miss Dallas justice,—­I am not sure.  She was not a bad-hearted woman.  She was a handsome woman.  She had come to Lime to enjoy herself.  Those September days and nights were fair there by the dreamy sea.  On the whole I am inclined to think that she did not know exactly what she was about.

“My perfumery never lasts,” said Harrie, once, stooping to pick up Pauline’s fine handkerchief, to which a faint scent like unseen heliotrope clung; it clung to everything of Pauline’s; you would never see a heliotrope without thinking of her, as Dr. Sharpe had often said.  “Myron used to like good cologne, but I can’t afford to buy it, so I make it myself, and use it Sundays, and it’s all blown away by the time I get to church.  Myron says he is glad of it, for it is more like Mrs. Allen’s Hair Restorer than anything else.  What do you use, Pauline?”

“Sachet powder of course,” said Miss Dallas, smiling.

That evening Harrie stole away by herself to the village apothecary’s.  Myron should not know for what she went.  If it were the breath of a heliotrope, thought foolish Harrie, which made it so pleasant for people to be near Pauline, that was a matter easily remedied.  But sachet powder, you should know, is a dollar an ounce, and Harrie must needs content herself with “the American,” which could be had for fifty cents; and so, of course, after she had spent her money, and made her little silk bags, and put them away into her bureau drawers, Myron never told her, for all her pains, that she reminded him of a heliotrope with the dew on it.  One day a pink silk bag fell out from under her dress, where she had tucked it.