I was pleased out of all proportion to its value by what Ellersly and his wife looked and said. But, though I watched Miss Ellersly closely, though I tried to draw from her some comment on my belongings--on my pictures, on my superb tapestries, on the beautiful carving of my furniture--I got nothing from her beyond that first look of surprise and pleasure. Her face resumed its statuelike calm, her eyes did not wander; her lips, like a crimson bow painted upon her clear, white skin, remained closed. She spoke only when she was spoken to, and then as briefly as possible. The dinner--and a mighty good dinner it was--would have been memorable for strain and silence had not Mrs. Ellersly kept up her incessant chatter. I can't recall a word she said, but I admired her for being able to talk at all. I knew she was in the same state as the rest of us, yet she acted perfectly at her ease; and not until I thought it over afterward did I realize that she had done all the talking, except answers to her occasional and cleverly-sprinkled direct questions. Ellersly sat opposite me, and I was irritated, and thrown into confusion, too, every time I lifted my eyes, by the crushed, criminal expression of his face. He ate and drank hugely--and extremely bad manners it would have been regarded in me had I made as much noise as he, or lifted such quantities at a time into my mouth. But through his noisy gluttony he managed somehow to maintain that hang-dog air--like a thief who has gone through the house and, on his way out, has paused at the pantry, with the sack of plunder beside him, to gorge himself. I looked at Anita several times, each time with a carefully-framed remark ready; each time I found her gaze on me--and I could say nothing, could only look away in a sort of panic. Her eyes were strangely variable. I have seen them of a gray, so pale that it was almost silver--like the steely light of the snow-line at the edge of the horizon; again, and they were so that evening, they shone with the deepest, softest blue, and made one think, as one looked at her, of a fresh violet frozen in a block of clear ice.