Dearwood, at twenty had been an uncanny-looking creature, the only
thing about her appealing to general masculine taste having been her
magnificent eyes, and even these had frightened more than they had
allured. At forty, Mrs. Camelford might have posed for the entire
Juno.

"Yes, he's a cunning old joker is Time," murmured Mr. Everett, almost
inaudibly.

"What ought to have happened," said Mrs. Armitage, while with deft
fingers rolling herself a cigarette, "was for you and Nellie to have
married."

Mrs. Everett's pale face flushed scarlet.

"My dear," exclaimed the shocked Nathaniel Armitage, flushing
likewise.

"Oh, why may one not sometimes speak the truth?" answered his wife
petulantly. "You and I are utterly unsuited to one another--everybody
sees it. At nineteen it seemed to me beautiful, holy, the idea of
being a clergyman's wife, fighting by his side against evil. Besides,
you have changed since then. You were human, my dear Nat, in those
days, and the best dancer I had ever met. It was your dancing was
your chief attraction for me as likely as not, if I had only known
myself. At nineteen how can one know oneself?"

"We loved each other," the Rev. Armitage reminded her.

"I know we did, passionately--then; but we don't now." She laughed a