Mary's temper suffered, and she vented her spleen on her pupils to such a degree that there came a time when she had only one left--the youngest daughter of the sausage-machine manufacturing widower, all of whose daughters she had instructed in turn in a polite mastery of the violin. Her bi-weekly visits to his house had become part of the routine of his household, and she was part and parcel of its furniture, being fitted into the heavy dinner-parties when there was a gap. At other entertainments she was never omitted and was as much part of their colour as the faded best chair-covers that were taken out for the occasion or the Japanese lanterns which illuminated them. She was useful, for she was always willing to play the piano for hours on end when the young people wanted to dance. To the widower, who never saw her on other occasions, she was always associated with gaiety. One day he proposed marriage to her, and she refused him. "Be sure," he said, "that I shall always be your friend. And I shall continue to hope." He was really relieved at being rejected, and retired to cogitate the extraordinary impulse which had driven him to do such a thing. He felt very uncomfortable, for the fictions with which he had surrounded his dead wife had been shaken. Mary left his house in a flutter. The man had always been kind to her, he was an admirable father, and she had always respected him as a solid man, though he was a little too Northernly solid to be taken altogether seriously. His house was very comfortable, though ugly and too reekingly prosperous, but the habit of years had made it a corner of the equilateral triangle of her life. Its atmosphere was altogether different from that of her home and delivered her from monotony.