As the words impulsively escaped, he heard a quick movement behind
him. He widened out his heavy arms upon his manuscript and looked back
over his shoulder at her and laughed. And still smiling and holding
his pen between his fingers, he turned and faced her. She had advanced
into the middle of the room and had stopped at the chair on which he
had thrown his overcoat and hat. She had picked up the hat and stood
turning it and pushing its soft material back into shape for his
head--without looking at him.

The northern light of the winter afternoon, entering through the
looped crimson-damask curtains, fell sidewise upon the woman of the
picture.

Years had passed since the picture had been made. There were changes
in her; she looked younger. She had effaced the ravages of a sadder
period of her life as human voyagers upon reaching quiet port repair
the damages of wandering and storm. Even the look of motherhood, of
the two motherhoods, which so characterized her in the photograph, had
disappeared for the present. Seeing her now for the first time, one
would have said that her whole mood and bearing made a single
declaration: she was neither wife nor mother; she was a woman in love
with life's youth--with youth--youth; in love with the things that
youth alone could ever secure to her.

The carriage of her beautiful head, brave and buoyant, brought before
you a vision of growing things in nature as they move towards their
summer yet far away. There still was youth in the round white throat
above the collar of green velvet--woodland green--darker than the
green of the cloth she wore. You were glad she had chosen that color