this pleasant, leisurely art that had such a new meaning and delight.  To keep being different, revealing her beauty in new ways, to see if he’d notice, to laugh in his arms and feel her power over Joe, had brought back her old zest for pretty clothes, and she had been wearing all the things she had bought when she first came to town.  Last year’s clothes, for they still smilingly called themselves “poor,” although Joe was doing much better now.  Last year’s clothes, and the styles had changed, but in ways which Joe, poor dear, was too blind to notice.

The room in which she was dressing had somehow assumed a different air.  Although in the main it was the same as when Amy had been here, and her picture was still on Joe’s chiffonier—­still subtly by degrees it had changed.  Some of Ethel’s clothes were lying about, her work-bag and a book or two; the dressing table at which she was sitting had been covered in fresh chintz, and Ethel’s things were on it.  Joe’s picture and Susette’s were here, and a droll little painted bird was perched above the mirror.

As she glanced into the glass, gaily she thanked herself for the charms which she was deftly enhancing—­in the glossy black hair, smooth and sleek, in the flushed cheeks and the red of her lips and the gleaming lights in her brown eyes.  She nodded approvingly at herself.  “You’re a great help to me, Mrs. Lanier.”

In the glass she could see her husband; she felt his glances from time to time.  This evening after dinner they were going out somewhere.  To what, he would not tell her.  There had been many of these small surprises. . . .  Now her pulse beat faster, for he had come behind her.  A sudden bending, a quick laugh, a murmur and a silence.  Then at last he let her go; but as she drew a deep, full breath and shot a side look up at him, he laughed again, low, tensely, and bent over as before.

Left alone, she smiled again into the glass.  It was hard to believe—­too wonderful—­this amazingly intimate feeling, this living with somebody, body and soul.  And what a child she had been before, a child in that solemn young resolve to marry Joe, this good, safe man, and raise a large family carefully.  It had been like a small girl thinking of dolls.  And like a small girl she had been in her panic on the night of her wedding, she thought.  How silly, ignorant, funny!  No—­she frowned—­it had been real, pretty ugly while it lasted.  But like a bug-a-boo it had gone.  And this good, safe man had become transformed in this amazing intimacy and had become a wild delight:  a man to laugh at, tease, provoke, and cling to, silent, in a flame; a man to mother, study out, probe into deep with questions; a man to plan and plan with.

“This love is to be the love of his life!  It’s to make us work and grow, make us fine and awake and alive to everything worth living for!  No laziness for you, my dear, no soft, cosy kitten life!  You’re to be a woman, a real one!  Don’t let there be any mistake about that!”