out. The sound came closer--sometimes very close indeed.



~V~

With the departure of Sanderson the significance of the curious
incidents waned, because the moods that had produced them passed away.
Mrs. Bittacy soon afterwards came to regard them as some growth of
disproportion that had been very largely, perhaps, in her own mind. It
did not strike her that this change was sudden for it came about quite
naturally. For one thing her husband never spoke of the matter, and for
another she remembered how many things in life that had seemed
inexplicable and singular at the time turned out later to have been
quite commonplace.

Most of it, certainly, she put down to the presence of the artist and to
his wild, suggestive talk. With his welcome removal, the world turned
ordinary again and safe. The fever, though it lasted as usual a short
time only, had not allowed of her husband's getting up to say good-bye,
and she had conveyed his regrets and adieux. In the morning Mr.
Sanderson had seemed ordinary enough. In his town hat and gloves, as she
saw him go, he seemed tame and unalarming.

"After all," she thought as she watched the pony-cart bear him off,
"he's only an artist!" What she had thought he might be otherwise her
slim imagination did not venture to disclose. Her change of feeling was
wholesome and refreshing. She felt a little ashamed of her behavior. She
gave him a smile--genuine because the relief she felt was genuine--as he
bent over her hand and kissed it, but she did not suggest a second