months. "I'm half a mind to go to this thing. I would, if it didn't
break up my day so."

"As for instance?"

"Well, this morning I have to go up to the riding-school to see a horse
--Storm; I want to try him. And then I have to go down to Twist's and see
a lot of Japanese drawings he's got over. Do you know that the birds and
other animals those beggars have been drawing, which we thought were
caricatures, are the real thing? They have eyes sharp enough to see
things in motion--flying birds and moving horses which we never caught
till we put the camera on them. Awfully curious. Then I shall step into
the club a minute, and--"

"Be in at lunch? Bess is coming."

"Don't wait lunch. I've a lot to do."

Edith followed him with her eyes, a little wistfully; she heard the outer
door close, and still sat at the table, turning over the pile of notes at
her plate, and thinking of many things--things that it began to dawn upon
her mind could not be done, and things of immediate urgency that must be
done. Life did not seem quite such a simple problem to her as it had
looked a year ago. That there is nothing like experiment to clear the
vision is the general idea, but oftener it is experience that perplexes.
Indeed, Edith was thinking that some things seemed much easier to her
before she had tried them.

As she sat at the table with a faultless morning-gown, with a bunch of
English violets in her bosom, an artist could have desired no better