husband. As she looked, one of Sparta's go-ahead young
men, glancing up as he passed in the street below and
seeing her there behind the panes, raised his hat.

"Heavens, _no!_" said Mrs. Bell. "You don't understand,
Leslie."

"Perhaps not," Mr. Bell returned. "We must get that
packing-case opened after dinner. I'm anxious to see the
pictures." Mr. Bell put the finishing touches to his
little finger-nail and briskly pocketed his penknife.
"Shall we go downstairs now?" he suggested. "Fix your
brooch, mother; it's just on the drop."

Elfrida Bell had been a long year away--a year that seemed
longer to her than it possibly could to anybody in Sparta,
as she privately reflected when her father made this
observation for the second and the third time. Sparta
accounted for its days chiefly in ledgers, the girl
thought; there was a rising and a going down of the sun,
a little eating and drinking and speedy sleeping, a little
discussion of the newspapers. Sparta got over its days
by strides and stretches, and the strides and stretches
seemed afterward to have been made over gaps and gulfs
full of emptiness. The year divided itself and got its
painted leaves, its white silences, its rounding buds,
and its warm fragrances from the winds of heaven, and so
there were four seasons in Sparta, and people talked of
an early spring or a late fall; but Elfrida told herself
that time had no other division, and the days no other