De Forest rose and stood with his back to the fire, looking complacently at his wife.  “What an odd sensation it must be—­having one’s time too full!  It’s an experience I’m willing always to delegate to some one else.  Doesn’t it feel rather like too tight shoes?”

Gerald laughed as she passed her husband to her seat at the table, and he stood still watching her as she began pouring coffee.  It was always a pleasure to watch her.  The butler drew out the gentleman’s chair firmly.  It was time his master took his seat with his lady.  There was too much of this dilly-dallying.  De Forest came lazily forward and seated himself.

“Any news?” asked Gerald.

“None whatever.  It’s a swindle to pay three cents for the Herald in such monotonous times.  I was reduced to searching in your church paper to see if by any chance something new had gotten lost in there.”

“I hope you found it.”

“I didn’t.  Not so much even as the death of someone I knew to cheer me.  There would have been variety at least in that.  By the way, though, I did see a familiar name among the personals,—­just a notice that the Rev. Denham Halloway had accepted a call to some church or other in some place or other.  He was quite a friend of yours, wasn’t he, that summer before we were married, when we were all in that odious little Joppa together?  How bored I was there!”

“Denham Halloway,” repeated Gerald, musingly.  “Denham Halloway.  Why, I don’t believe I have thought of him since.  But he was never any especial friend of mine, you know.”

“Ah, there was somebody else who managed to engross a great deal of your time and most of your thoughts that summer, was there not, my dear, while nobody but myself was bold enough to suppose that any impression had been made on that frigid heart of yours?  Well, I was perfectly fair.  I left your friend, Phebe, for Halloway.”

“Poor little Phebe!” said Gerald, with softened eyes.  “How long ago it all seems.  Poor dear little Phebe!  I have never wanted to hear of Joppa since her death.  I feel as if she had given her life for it.  Yes; I don’t suppose I have thought twice of Denham Halloway since.”

Ah, so it was!  That brief summer meeting, which had had so potent an influence on the lives of those other two, had in her life been only an incident.

THE END.