to be.  He, as before said, had never been vain, but mortal man could not have helped exultation at the sight of that victorious visage of himself looking back at him.  He did not admit it to himself, but he took more pains with his dress, although he had always been rather punctilious in that direction.  All unknown to himself, and, had he known it, the knowledge would have aroused in him rebellion and shame, he was carrying out the instinct of the love-smitten male of all species.  In lieu of the gorgeous feathers he put on a new coat and tie, he trimmed his mustache carefully.  He smoothed and lighted his face with the beauty of joy and hope and of pleasant dreams.  But there was, since he was a man at the head of creation, something more subtle and noble in his preening.  In those days he became curiously careful—­although, being naturally clean-hearted, he had little need for care—­of his very thoughts.  Naturally fastidious in his soul habits, he became even more so.  The very books he read were, although he was unconscious of it, such as contributed to his spiritual adornment, to fit himself for his constant dwelling in his country of dreams.  Certain people he avoided, certain he courted.  One woman, who was innately coarse, although her life had hedged her in safely from impropriety, was calling upon his mother one afternoon about this time.  She was the wife of the old Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. Gregg.  She was a small, solidly built woman, in late middle life, tightly hooked up in black silk as to her body, and as to her soul by the prescribed boundaries of her position in life.  Anderson, returning rather earlier than usual, found her with his mother, and retreated with actual rudeness, the woman became all at once so repellent to him.

“My son gets very tired,” Mrs. Anderson said, softly, as she passed the pound-cake again to her caller.  “Quite often, when he comes in, he goes by himself and has a quiet smoke before he says much even to me.”

Mrs. Gregg was eating the pound-cake with such extreme relish that Mrs. Anderson, who was herself fastidious, looked away, and as she did so heard distinctly a smack of the other woman’s lips.

“He grows handsomer and younger every time I see him,” remarked Mrs. Gregg when she had swallowed her mouthful of cake and before she took another.

Mrs. Anderson repeated the caller’s compliment to her son later on when the two were at the supper-table.  “Yes, she paid you a great compliment,” said she; “but, dear, why did you run out in that way?  It was almost rude, and she the minister’s wife, too.”

“I don’t see how Dr. Gregg keeps up his necessary quota of saving grace, living with her,” said Anderson.

“Why, my dear, I think she is a good woman.”

“She is a bottled-up vessel of wrath,” said Anderson.

“My son, I never heard you speak so before, and about a lady, too.”

Anderson fairly blushed before his mother’s mild eyes of surprise.  “Mother, you are right,” he said, penitently.  “I ought to be ashamed of myself, and I am.  I know I was rude, but I did not feel like seeing her to-day.  Of course she is a good woman.”