All one week, Anne’s step on the threshold of his room was gone. David fumbled in bare feet along the tunneled hall. His flat palm felt her door. It was locked. The end--sweet end of unreplenishment. No word further: no glance toward the past to open it once more.... * * * * * They were really there--the Deanes! A cool, bright night with stars crushed above the crude wave of the city streets. They had traveled through that night and those stars for this city. They were there in the early morning. They came in discussiveness and noise, as a luxurious gift comes wrapped in crackling paper. Once unbundled, they were rather silent. David sensed an unease and discomfort in their coming--a token of what happened in souls of their kind when they were taken even for a day from the rounds of their habits. David observed with what swift recuperation they merged into the imprint of their house; how their house seemed to sigh and settle with the recapture of its soul. Sudden, there was David, completely strange, dizzily away: with the memory of his amour an unbelievable, discreditable dream. He watched Anne with the other servants that had come sink swiftly into the cloud of servience: lose her charm and her sex: dwindle in an instant to be an appendage of her mistresses, an inflection of the wishes of these reigning women. By the shock of this a sort of osmosis went on in David. He found himself partly identified with Anne: had they not been one together?--and, so, diminished, humbled. Another part of him flung her off and merged with his cousins, his flesh and blood; become Anne’s remote and indifferent master. He stood there awkward while the process shredded and dazed him. Between these warring halves of himself, he fell away from the sharp social trial of the moment--the need of fronting these women. His aunt took note of a vacancy about him. “Well, David, it’s been a long time waiting to know you.” She added to herself: “He’s stupid.” Her second daughter, Lois, supplemented her aunt as one generation should another: “I think he’s dear”; she looked at him keenly, “but what’s bewildering him so?” She came very close to him, and held out her hand. “I’m awfully glad to know you, David.” He took her hand so patiently, that she held up her lips, “We’re cousins,” she explained and she laughed. With great seriousness, he kissed her and liked her. Muriel, who was nineteen and three years older and wiser than Lois, watched the little challenge of acquaintance, smiled sourly, busied herself with her bags. “Well,” she said, searching for her powder puff. “I suppose it has been frightfully hot?” Mr. Deane had been quarreling with the coachman about the fare: his own carriage was not yet in service. He puffed into the room. David saw and at length realized how changed he was, in the true setting of his wife and daughters. He scarcely noticed David.