Yes, Fanny's eyes were her principal attraction, they were forever
startling, contrasted with the rest, not only remarkable in shade but,
as well, in light; in her quick unreasoning tempers, the only
perceptible flaw of her character, they sparkled with brilliancy. The
tempers, Lee decided, descending the narrow stony road from the club-
house to his gate, were an unavoidable part of her special qualities:
her quick decisiveness, her sharp recognitions of right and her
obdurate condemnation of wrong--these distinctions were never obscured
in Fanny--necessitated a finality of judgment open to anger at any
contrary position. Aside from that she was as secure, as predictable,
as any heavenly orbit; her love for him, beginning before marriage, had
quietly and constantly increased; her usual mood was moulded to his
need; nothing had ever contested the supremacy of his place with her.

Lee swung open the white wicket that broke the middle of his border
hedge and went up the path over the broad lawn; the house, an admirable
copy of locally colonial dwellings, was a yellow stucco, with a porch
on his left and the dining-room at the extreme right. Beyond the porch
was the square of the formal garden, indistinguishable at this season,
and the garage, the driveway, were hidden at the back. He mounted the
broad steps of field stone at the terrace, but, in place of going
directly in under the main portico, turned aside to the porch, past the
dim bare forms of the old maples. Just as he had anticipated, the glass
door showed him Fanny sitting in the maple slatted-back rocking-chair;
Gregory, in blue, was present, but Helena not to be seen.

His wife's hands were lying idly in her lap, and she was gazing into
nothingness with an expression he had never before noticed, there was a
faint troubled doubt on her brow, a questioning expression about her