Just after this I decided to move my quarters. Pushkin was beginning to come again to the old Drummer's house, I did not know why--and though I did not meet him I could not bear to be under the same roof with him. I began to feel, too, the change in the household. Elsa had begun to change somehow. Instead of the little carols and snatches like bird-songs that I used to hear before she went to her work, or in the evening when she returned, there was silence and sometimes sighs, and in place of smiles, gloom. Her face lost its bloom. I wondered what the poor thing was distressing herself about. My young Swede, too, whom I still occasionally saw, appeared to have lost that breezy freshness and glow which always reminded me of country meadows and upland hay-fields, and looked downcast and moody. In place of his good-humored smile, his ruddy face began to wear a glowering, sullen look; and finally he disappeared. The mother, also, changed, and her voice, formerly so cheery and pleasant, had a sharper tone than I had ever heard in it before, and even the old drummer wore a cloudier air, wholly different from his old-time cheeriness. In fact, the whole house had changed from the nest of content that it had been, and I began to plan moving to a better neighborhood which my improving practice appeared to justify. The chief thing that withheld me was that radiant glimpse of Miss Leigh which I sometimes got of a morning as she came tripping along the street with her little basket in her hand, and her face sweet with high thoughts. It set me up all day; attended me to my office, and filled it with sunshine and hope. Moreover, I was beginning to find in my association with John Marvel a certain something which I felt I should miss. He calmed me and gave me resolution. It appeared strange that one whom I had always looked down on should so affect me, but I could no longer hide it from myself. But against this reason for remaining I set the improvement in my condition that a better lodging-place would indicate. After a time, my broad-shouldered young Swedish car-driver came back and I was glad I had remained. Several times in the evening I found him in the house dressed up with shiny hair, a very bright necktie, and a black coat, the picture of embarrassed happiness, and Elsa sitting up and looking prim and, I fancied, a trifle bored, though it might have been only demureness. When I heard her singing again, I assumed that it was the latter expression, and not the former, which I had observed. However, I came in one night and heard Pushkin's voice in the house and I was again at sea. Elsa in all the gayety of her best frock and ribbons, dashed by me as I mounted the stair to my room.