validity of their common existence, their marriage. Fanny had an
advantage over him there, for all her aspirations turned inward to
their love, their home and children; and his ... but if he knew their
goal he could have beaten life.

* * * * *

Footfalls approaching over the hall--the maid to tell him dinner was
served--brought him sharply to his feet, and he hurried down to where
Fanny, who liked to do such things, had finished lighting the candles
on the table. In reply to the glance of interrogation at his
inappropriate clothes he explained that, trivially occupied, he had
been unaware of the flight of time. Throughout dinner Fanny and he said
little; their children had a supper at six o'clock, and at seven were
sent to bed; so there were commonly but two at the other table. He had
an occasional glimpse of his wife, behind a high centerpiece of late
chrysanthemums, the color of bright copper pennies and hardly larger;
and he was struck, as he was so often, by Fanny's youthful appearance;
but that wasn't, he decided, so much because of her actual person--
although since her marriage she had shown practically no change--as
from a spirit of rigorous purity; she was, in spite of everything, Lee
realized, completely virginal in mind.

The way she sat and walked, with her elbows close to her body and her
high square shoulders carried forward, gave her an air of eagerness, of
youthful hurry. Perhaps she grew more easily tired now than formerly;
her face then seemed thinner than ever, the temples sunken and cheek-
bones evident, and her eyes startling in their size and blueness and
prominence. She kept, too, the almost shrinking delicacy of a girl's
mind: Fanny never repeated stories not sufficiently saved from the