compounded of derision and relief--a shamefaced smile which admitted
an opinion of herself very far from flattering.

So occupied was she with her mental reactions that she had no
attention to spare for the opposite side of the street and therefore
missed the slightly peculiar action of her husband-by-courtesy.
Professor Spence, when he had first caught sight of his wife had
automatically paused, as if to call or cross over. It had become
their friendly habit to inform each other of their daily plans and a
cheery "whither away?" had risen naturally to the professor's lips.
It rose to them, but did not leave them, for, in the intervening
instant, he had grasped the fact of Desire's smiling abstraction and
had sought its explanation in the place from which she had come.
desire calling at old Bones' office at this hour of the morning?
Before he had recovered from the surprise of it, she had passed.

Time, which seems so mighty, is sometimes quite negligible. The most
amazing mental illuminations may occupy only the fraction of a
second. A light flashes and is gone--but meanwhile one has seen.

The professor's pause was hardly noticeable. He walked on at once.
But years could not have instructed him more thoroughly than that
one second. He had received a revelation. Like all revelations, he
received it in its entirety and realized it piecemeal. His thoughts
stumbled over each other in confusion. . . . Desire at John's office
at this unusual hour? . . . Desire in her prettiest frock and
smiling . . . smiling, and so lost in her own thoughts that she saw
no one . . . Desire . . . John? . . . What the devil!

Spence had a finicky dislike of strong language. He thought it