Her smile was an exasperating concession to the probability that
it had been hot in town or that something had bothered him.

"Do you mean it's not nice to want to read the book?" she asked.
"It was not nice to publish it, certainly; but after all, I'm not
responsible for that, am I?" She paused, and, as he made no
answer, went on, still smiling, "I do read sometimes, you know;
and I'm very fond of Margaret Aubyn's books. I was reading
'Pomegranate Seed' when we first met. Don't you remember? It was
then you told me all about her."

Glennard had turned back into the room and stood staring at his
wife. "All about her?" he repeated, and with the words
remembrance came to him. He had found Miss Trent one afternoon
with the novel in her hand, and moved by the lover's fatuous
impulse to associate himself in some way with whatever fills the
mind of the beloved, had broken through his habitual silence about
the past. Rewarded by the consciousness of figuring impressively
in Miss Trent's imagination he had gone on from one anecdote to
another, reviving dormant details of his old Hillbridge life, and
pasturing his vanity on the eagerness with which she received his
reminiscences of a being already clothed in the impersonality of
greatness.

The incident had left no trace in his mind; but it sprang up now
like an old enemy, the more dangerous for having been forgotten.
The instinct of self-preservation--sometimes the most perilous
that man can exercise--made him awkwardly declare--"Oh, I used to
see her at people's houses, that was all;" and her silence as