Mrs. Yarrow fixed dimly beautiful eyes upon him.  “I don’t know,” she said, “why it wouldn’t be ideal—­as much ideal as anything—­to give one’s self absolutely to—­to—­a duty—­or not duty, exactly; I don’t mean that.  Especially,” she added, showing a light through the mist, “if one wanted to do it.”

Then he knew she had made up her mind, and though on some accounts he would have liked to laugh with her, on other accounts he felt that he owed it to her to be serious.

“If women could not fulfil the ideal in that way—­if they did not constantly do it—­there would be no marriages for love.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, with a shaking voice.  “But men—­men are ideal, too.”

“Not as women are—­except now and then some fool like Alford.”  Now, indeed, he laughed, and he began to praise Alford from his heart, so delicately, so tenderly, so reverently, that Mrs. Yarrow laughed too before he was done, and cried a little, and when she rose to leave she could not speak; but clung to his hand, on turning away, and so flung it from behind her with a gesture that Enderby thought pretty.

At this point, Wanhope stopped as if that were the end.

“And did she let Alford come to see her again?” Rulledge, at once romantic and literal, demanded.

“Oh yes.  At any rate, they were married that fall.  They are—­I believe he’s pursuing his archaeological studies there—­living in Athens.”

“Together?” Minver smoothly inquired.

At this expression of cynicism Rulledge gave him a look that would have incinerated another.  Wanhope went out with Minver, and then, after a moment’s daze, Rulledge exclaimed:  “Jove!  I forgot to ask him whether it’s stopped Alford’s illusions!”

III

A MEMORY THAT WORKED OVERTIME

Minver’s brother took down from the top of the low bookshelf a small painting on panel, which he first studied in the obverse, and then turned and contemplated on the back with the same dreamy smile.  “I don’t see how that got here,” he said, absently.

“Well,” Minver returned, “you don’t expect me to tell you, except on the principle that any one would naturally know more about anything of yours than you would.”  He took it from his brother and looked at the front of it.  “It isn’t bad.  It’s pretty good!” He turned it round.  “Why, it’s one of old Blakey’s!  How did you come by it?”

“Stole it, probably,” Minver’s brother said, still thoughtfully.  Then with an effect of recollecting:  “No, come to think of it,” he added, “Blakey gave it to me.”  The Minvers played these little comedies together, quite as much to satisfy their tenderness for each other as to give their friends pleasure.  “Think you’re the only painter that gets me to take his truck as a gift?  He gave it to me, let’s see, about ten years ago, when he was trying to make a die of it, and failed; I thought he would succeed.  But it’s been in my wife’s room nearly ever since, and what I can’t understand is what she’s doing with it down here.”