than when the portrait had been painted. She always,
indeed, struck Newland Archer as having been rather
gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a
perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in
glaciers keep for years a rosy life-in-death.

Like all his family, he esteemed and admired Mrs.
van der Luyden; but he found her gentle bending sweetness
less approachable than the grimness of some of his
mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said "No" on
principle before they knew what they were going to be
asked.

Mrs. van der Luyden's attitude said neither yes nor
no, but always appeared to incline to clemency till her
thin lips, wavering into the shadow of a smile, made
the almost invariable reply: "I shall first have to talk
this over with my husband."

She and Mr. van der Luyden were so exactly alike
that Archer often wondered how, after forty years of
the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever
separated themselves enough for anything as controversial
as a talking-over. But as neither had ever reached a
decision without prefacing it by this mysterious
conclave, Mrs. Archer and her son, having set forth their
case, waited resignedly for the familiar phrase.

Mrs. van der Luyden, however, who had seldom
surprised any one, now surprised them by reaching her