"They work, Vin."

He nodded as if no one knew that better than he.

Soon after dinner he went up-stairs to write some letters. She followed
him about ten o'clock. She came and leaned one hand on his shoulder and
one on his desk.

"Still working?" she said. She had been aware of no desire to see what he
was writing, but she was instantly aware that his blotting-paper had
fallen across the sheet, that the sheet was not a piece of note-paper,
but one of a large pad on which he had been apparently making notes.

Her diamond bracelet had slipped down her wrist and lay upon the
blotting-paper; he slowly and carefully pushed it up her slim, round arm
until it once more clung in place.

"I've nearly finished," he said; and to her ears there was some under
sound of pain or of constraint in his tone.

A little later he strolled, still dressed, into her room. She was already
in bed, and he came and sat on the foot of the bed, with one foot tucked
under him and his arms folded.

Her mind during the interval had been exclusively occupied with the
position of that piece of blotting-paper. Could it be there was some
other woman whose ghost-like presence she was just beginning to feel
haunting their relation? The impersonality of Vincent's manner was an
armor against such attacks, but this armor, as Adelaide knew, was more
apparent than real. If one could get beyond that, one was at the very