It was Mrs. Carville. She stepped quickly into the room so that the door might be closed on the cold night air, and looked round with an unwonted gaiety in her mien. As her gaze fell upon the two little boys, who stood close to my knee and hampered my rising, I fancied the expression of her fine dark eyes hardened a little. It may have been only fancy, but it made me wonder if the cause of her elation lay beyond the family circle. At first I had a twinge, for when a woman, whose husband is in some Mediterranean port, is elated by something beyond her front door, the world (and I belonged to the world, after all) looks grave. I suppose I myself looked grave as I bowed, for she regarded me--her eyes coming back to my face for a moment--with a certain gallant challenge, as though she read my shadowy thought and defied it. And then, sitting back in my chair again and watching her respond to the charm of my friend's manner, I could not help wishing that Mr. Carville had seen fit to give us a little more of his wife's character in his narrative. It seemed to me that the dry, clear light of his recondite mind would have thrown into admirable gleams and shadows, gleams of humour and shadows of blind fate, the brilliant creature who sat before us. There was nothing material in her manner as she let her glance fall again upon the children. The gaiety super-imposed upon her customary staid gravity seemed to have made her, not younger or less mature, but less domestic, more complex and mystifying. And I found myself recalling Mr. Carville's contemptuous moralizings upon the illusory nature of love. I tried, foolish as it may seem, to place myself intellectually in the place of a woman like Mrs. Carville, to conceive her probable fundamental attitude towards her offspring, trodden smooth and firm by the daily round of chores, an active, vigorous mind in an active, vigorous body.... Well, this was journeyman's work, I suppose, for a novelist; yet for me it had a freshness and spice that led me on until I pulled up sharply and felt the pang of shame. I am continually torn in the conflict between realism and what are called "unworthy thoughts." If it were not for a fear of traducing my own character by an ambiguous phrase, I would confess to many "unworthy thoughts" of many worthy people. I suppress them, of course, as I suppressed these concerning Mrs. Carville's trip to New York and the secular gaiety that now sat like a diadem on Mrs. Carville's forehead; but I have them all the same. I was roused by Mrs. Carville's rising and saying that the children must go to bed. "Let them come in again soon," said Mac. "We would like to say 'any time,' you know, but we're like parsons and doctors, we work at home and we can't have holidays every day." "I am glad they have been no trouble," she replied, regarding them with a preoccupied approval.