cynical intonation. By altering it ever so little he could make
people wince, especially if they were simple or poor. Nor did he
transmit his eyes. Their peculiar flatness, as if the soul looked
through dirty window-panes, the unkindness of them, the
cowardice, the fear in them, were to trouble the world no longer.

He married a girl whose voice was beautiful. There was no caress
in it yet all who heard it were soothed, as though the world held
some unexpected blessing. She called to her dogs one night over
invisible waters, and he, a tourist up on the bridge, thought
"that is extraordinarily adequate." In time he discovered that
her figure, face, and thoughts were adequate also, and as she was
not impossible socially, he married her. "I have taken a plunge,"
he told his family. The family, hostile at first, had not a word
to say when the woman was introduced to them; and his sister
declared that the plunge had been taken from the opposite bank.

Things only went right for a little time. Though beautiful
without and within, Mrs. Elliot had not the gift of making her
home beautiful; and one day, when she bought a carpet for the
dining-room that clashed, he laughed gently, said he "really
couldn't," and departed. Departure is perhaps too strong a word.
In Mrs. Elliot's mouth it became, "My husband has to sleep more
in town." He often came down to see them, nearly always
unexpectedly, and occasionally they went to see him. "Father's
house," as Rickie called it, only had three rooms, but these were
full of books and pictures and flowers; and the flowers, instead
of being squashed down into the vases as they were in mummy's
house, rose gracefully from frames of lead which lay coiled at
the bottom, as doubtless the sea serpent has to lie, coiled at