hands to a small, dark young woman, with waving brown hair and large eyes
that were fixed on distant objects.

"Eros with a husband and two children," Aline Goring murmured, in her soft
contralto. "You remember Eugene? At the Springs that summer?" The husband,
a tall, smooth-shaven, young man with glasses and the delicate air of the
steam-heated American scholar bowed stiffly.

"Of course! Didn't I aid and abet you two?"

"That's two years and a half ago," Aline remarked, as if the simple words
covered a multitude of facts about life. "We are on our way to St. Louis to
settle."

"Splendid!" Isabelle exclaimed. "We shall have you again. Torso, where we
are exiled for the present, is only a night's ride from St. Louis."

Aline smiled that slow, warm smile, which seemed to come from the remote
inner heart of her dreamy life. Isabelle looked at her eagerly, searching
for the radiant, woodsy creature she had known, that Eros, with her dreamy,
passionate, romantic temperament, a girl whom girls adored and kissed and
petted, divining in her the feminine spirit of themselves. Surely, she
should be happy, Aline, the beautiful girl made for love, poetic, tender.
The lovely eyes were there, but veiled; the velvety skin had roughened; and
the small body was almost heavy. The wood nymph had been submerged in
matrimony.

Goring was saying in a twinkling manner:--

"I've been reckoning up, Mrs. Lane. You are the seventh most intimate girl