Mrs. Wade sighed as she remembered how everyone had flocked
around Norah. Rose had inherited her mother's charm. Such women
were a race apart. They could no more be held responsible for
trying to please than a flower for exhaling its fragrance. At
what a lovely moment of life she was! Small wonder that Martin
was captivated, but not even the shadow of harm must fall on that
fresh young spirit while she was under their roof. If things went
much further she would have it out with him. And this decision
reached, Mrs. Wade felt her usual composure gradually return, nor
did it again desert her during the long evening through which it
seemed to her as if her husband must be some stranger.



VII

MARTIN BATTLES WITH DUST

THE human animal is a strange spectacle to behold, let alone
comprehend. Not infrequently he goes along for years developing a
state of mind, a consistent attitude, and then having got it
thoroughly established does something in distinct contradiction
to it. Martin had never cared for music, but when one evening, a
little more than a week after Rose's arrival, she suggested, with
a laughing lilt, her fondness for it, he agreed that he had
missed it in his home and, to Bill's and Mrs. Wade's unbelieving
surprise, dwelt at length upon his enjoyment of Fallon's band and
his longing to blow a cornet. A little later, finding an excuse
to leave, he drove into town on a mission so foreign to his
iron-clad character that it seemed to cry against his every