As usual he waited for Ethelbert to speak; but as is not usual she, recognizing his moral state, did not come down and hunt round for something to say on its level. “The great gulf fixed,” was fixed. She did not try to cross it; so she escaped falling and floundering therein, for her pains. Ethelbert believed not in self-abnegation, but in self-expression. She believed it right to stand squarely on her own fair heights; that from there, with the hand next her heart placed in Jehovah’s, she could give her _brain_-inspired right hand to brother man and then lift! “An Englishman dares be silent,” they say, and Ethelbert’s English quality was in the ascendant, when Reginald looked at her, wishing to know if those mother-eyes were backed by a brain filled with mother wit and wisdom. He met silence, and went away from that party with an unsatisfied hunger in his soul, which proved that that abused thing was not dead yet. After that they met casually often; and Ethelbert, who “pondered all these things in her heart,” which are brought by “ministering spirits to those who are _heirs_ of salvation,” knew Reginald better than as if they for years had talked much self-disguising trash together. One summer afternoon when she was sitting on the balcony of the Daksha home he passed and raised his hat, and she bowed in return, with the thought in mind and eyes, “that man is inherently a good man.” And he saw it, and halted, and then with direct purpose, crossed the street and seated himself on the step, asking no permission. “Miss Ethelbert, you always make me wish I were a boy five years old,” he said. “I wish you were,” said Ethelbert. This was sudden for Reginald; for though he was willing to recognize the failure he had made of manhood, Ethelbert’s businesslike way of accepting the idea was not flattering, and he was used to flattery. “Why do you wish it?” he said after knocking his teeth, not agreeably, with the head of his cane and gazing at her combatively. “So that you could cleave to the right. You are so old in your habits now, so undeveloped in the practice of judgment, and—oh, there is Bertha! Come right up here, Bertha. I was sitting here looking for you. Yes, you can have the newly cut lawn grass for your rabbits; but I want to see you first. I have saved the papers for you. Now, Mr. Grove, this is one of my friends, Bertha Gemacht; and Bertha, this is one of my friends, Reginald Grove.” Reginald had risen to his feet under this speech, the words of which are only recorded. The cool, helpful look which she turned on him in view of his moral mismanagement, and which was not in the least altered as she looked from him to Bertha, and from Bertha to him again, was as new to him as it was irritating and fascinating. For Bertha was to him a hard-looking woman as she laid her sack for holding the grass, down, and turned on him a look cowed, yet angry, and with another mixed expression indescribable.