If he were coming she would wear the pale yellow dress he admired and arrange her hair in the way he most praised, a low knot drawn above her neck and pushed securely into the curves at the back of her skull. Knowing that he would come she would linger over the hair, a thought of him and of his gracious, easily given admiration in every lift of the comb as she gently tooled the mass into shape and smiled now and again at her long face with its firm thin red lips. She had read from her grandfather’s books and Frank had brought her books containing the new learning. Conway’s knowledge was more powerful with her, she knew, and she smiled at her curving smile until her own lips told her their subtle learning, over and over, retelling. Conway would seat her in the chair of the blue brocade and he would adjust the light to fall in a cascade on the yellow gown, or he would arrange the bowl of roses with some reference to herself and himself and then sit negligently in his chair, himself a part of some whole which he at the same instant encompassed, having no notion of why he did these things. Or did he have no notion? she argued. His knowledge would spread through the room, through the house, gathered to the brilliant constellations that swam in a sun-shaft of light before a window, the motes of the beam, and gathered again to the scent of the honeysuckle outside on the chimney. * * * * * Albert would come heavily into the parlor although his feet were agile and his large frame was light to his motions. He filled the parlor with his seriousness and with his ponderous future which circled about his agricultural studies. He would lay his pretexts out, this way and that, making his decisions in her presence, but if Conway were at hand he was more light and less committed, as if only Theodosia had his confidences, as if his approach to Conway were still by the way of the college they had attended, of the streets they now walked together, of the ball they sometimes tossed back and forth, the dogs they owned in common. His strong body, rich with blood and bulk, seemed about to burst from its clothing as he sat opposite the light, moving from time to time in his seat in an excess of vitality. If he bent over a printed page, his earnest eyes lowered to their drooping, his mouth caught in its relaxed, searching pose, his studious moment would give him back to his boyhood, even to childhood, and Theodosia would smile faintly beside her eyes, deeply under the flesh, in a moment of tenderness. Sometimes she would play for him the light music he desired, bent rhythms that paused over brinks and leaped with spasmodic passion to its fulfilment in another twisted measure, any sort so that it moved swiftly to its consummation and readily fulfilled its promises. She was contemptuous of his taste in melodies even when she wanted most to please him. He was a part of the rich insufficiency that surrounded her.