life as much as I had. At least, I reflected comfortably, we had
separated upon an agreement this time, recognized mutually, though not
actually stated.

And this point of meeting was, oddly enough, our way of regarding some
one who was dead.

For we had both disliked the husband with a great dislike, and during
his three years' married life had only been to the house once--for a
weekend visit; arriving late on Saturday, we had left after an early
breakfast on Monday morning. Ascribing my sister's dislike to a natural
jealousy at losing her old friend, I said merely that he displeased me.
Yet we both knew that the real emotion lay much deeper. Frances, loyal,
honorable creature, had kept silence; and beyond saying that house and
grounds--he altered one and laid out the other--distressed her as an
expression of his personality somehow ('distressed' was the word she
used), no further explanation had passed her lips.

Our dislike of his personality was easily accounted for--up to a point,
since both of us shared the artist's point of view that a creed, cut to
measure and carefully dried, was an ugly thing, and that a dogma to
which believers must subscribe or perish everlastingly was a barbarism
resting upon cruelty. But while my own dislike was purely due to an
abstract worship of Beauty, my sister's had another twist in it, for
with her "new" tendencies, she believed that all religions were an
aspect of truth and that no one, even the lowest wretch, could escape
"heaven" in the long run.

Samuel Franklyn, the rich banker, was a man universally respected and
admired, and the marriage, though Mabel was fifteen years his junior,