it isn't capable of a practical demonstration. If Marion had come of a
believing family, she could have brought me back into the fold. Her great
mistake was in being brought up by an uncle who denied that he was living
here, even. The poor girl could not do a thing when it came to the life
hereafter."

The smile now came hovering back, and alighted at a corner of Mrs.
Alderling's mouth, making it look, oddly enough, rather rueful. "It
didn't matter about me. I thought it a pity that Alderling's talent
should stop here."

"Did you ever know anything like that?" he cried. "Perfectly willing to
thrust me out into a cold other-world, and leave me to struggle on
without her, when I had got used to her looking after me. Now I'm not so
selfish as that. I shouldn't want to have Marion living on through all
eternity if I wasn't with her. It would be too lonely for her."

He looked up at her, with his dancing eyes, and she put her hand down
over his shoulder into the hand that he lifted to meet it, in a way that
would have made me sick in some people. But in her the action was so
casual, so absent, that it did not affect me disagreeably.

"Do you mean that you haven't been away since you came here three years
ago?" I asked.

"We ran up to the theatre once in Boston last winter, but it bored us to
the limit." Alderling poked his knife-blade into the bowl of his pipe as
he spoke, having freed his hand for the purpose, while Mrs. Alderling
leaned back against the slim column again. He said gravely: "It was a
great thing for Marion, though. In view of the railroad accident that