When he came up with her it was as if he were his own shadow walking beside her. "Little moon, I love you." He talked under his breath. He scarcely wanted her to hear his absurdity. Then he placed his arm around her. Her cold sweet thinness was like the shadow of the moon, thin and still on the topmost branch of the strange tree. Her small breast swelled against his hand and he could feel her heart beat. "Oh, May!" He kissed her. He kissed the silence between them. "Gee, kid!" he said. "Paul, dear." They walked along together, happy; but less happy as they neared the hedge that cut them off from the street and the glow from an arc lamp began to fall across the grass. When they stood under the light the absurdity had gone from Paul. He wondered what had happened to him back there in the darkness. He had taken his arm from her waist and now he pressed her hands, afraid that she would observe the change in him. "Good night, May, child." May was tremulous and bewildered. "Good night, Paul." She tried laboriously to fit her tone to his brotherly kindliness. * * * * * Mrs. Hurst sat with Julia at tea in Julia's upstairs room. The late sun stretched tired rays across the soft blue carpet. The yellow curtains glowed before the open windows, and, fluttering apart, showed the thick foliage of the trees that screened the houses opposite. The atmosphere intensified the very immobility of the furniture. There was a voluptuous finality in the liquid repose of light on the polished floor and the glint of a glass vase, where needle rays of brightness were transfixed among the stems of flowers. Julia poured tea from a flat vermilion pot. The tea stood clear and dark in the black cups. Over the two women hung a moist bitter odor, the bruised sweetness of withering roses. The afternoon smells of dampened dust and new-cut grass blew in from the street. Mrs. Hurst took her cup in her small, slightly unsteady hand, and sipped. The veins were growing large and hard and showed through the delicately withered skin on which there were tiny brown spots like stains. She wore a wedding ring rubbed thin. "My dear, you still have that wonderful old Negress who used to be your maid? How do you manage to keep her? I'm always struggling with some fresh domestic problem." Mrs. Hurst smiled and with her free hand settled her trim glasses on her neat nose. Her sweet little face, turned toward Julia, showed a determined insistence on negative happiness. "I think we have a great deal more to struggle with than our grandmothers did. We haven't only our homes to look after, but our social responsibilities are so great." Mrs. Hurst was beautifully and simply dressed in gray, and the soft outline of her hat, with its tilt of roses at the back, gave an air of gallantry to her faded features, which were those of a sophisticated little girl--the face of a woman of forty-six whose sex life has passed away without her knowing it.