It was a shame to spoil it, but Ellen and Russell sprang up, and tried to shake hands with me, though I wasn't taking the slightest notice of them. It was the baby I was engaged in. I'd never seen him before. In fact, I'd never seen Ellen and Russell since they were married two years before and went off to Europe, and lived on a peak of the Alps where the baby was born. They took me to a gray little room that was to be mine, and I put on a fresh lace collar and my cameo pin and my best back comb. And then dinner was ready--a little, round white table with not one living thing on it but lace and roses and glass and silver. "Why," says I, before I got through with my melon that came first, "why, you two must be perfectly happy, ain't you?" And Ellen says, looking over to him: "Perfectly, absolutely, radiantly happy. Yes, I am." And this is what Russell done. He broke his bread, and nodded to both of us promiscuous, and he says: "Considerable happier than any decent man has a right to be, I'm thinking." I noticed that incident particular. And when I look back on it now, I know that that very first evening I begun noticing other things. I remember the talk went on about like this: "Ellen," says Russell, "the dog show opened yesterday. They've got some great little pups, I hear. Aren't you going in?" "Why--I am if you are," says Ellen. "Nonsense," says Russell, "I can run in any time, but I can't very well meet you there in the middle of the day. You go in yourself." "Well, I only enjoy it about a third as much to go alone," says she. "The dogs don't differ when I'm along, you know, lady," says he, smiling. "You know that isn't what I mean," she says. And she looked over at him, and smiled at his eyes with her eyes. But I saw that he looked away first, sort of troubled. And I thought: "Why, she acts as if not enjoying things when he ain't along is a kind of joyful sacrifice, that would please any man. I wonder if it does." It happened two-three times through dinner. She hadn't been over to see some kind of a collection, and couldn't he come home some night early and take her? He couldn't promise--why didn't she go herself and tell him about it? "You wouldn't have said that three years ago," she says, half fun, half earnest, and waited for him to deny it. But he didn't seem to sense what was expected of him, and he just et on. Ain't it funny how you can sort of see things through the pores of your skin? By the time dinner was over, I knew most as much about those two as if I had lived in the house with them a week.