“Yes, some of it’s pretty ugly.” “It’s all ugly. It’s all hideous!” he said. “No, not all.” And when they had left the avenue behind them, and reached the district of the bungalows and small wooden houses, she showed him gardens that he was forced to admit were “pretty.” But when they got beyond this, to where had been the broad stretches of woodland and meadow that Dan had planned for his “restricted residence district,” she insisted on her husband’s consent to the word “beautiful”; for the woodland was still there, so that one could hardly see the houses; and long hedges of bridal-wreath were flowering everywhere, as if snow had fallen upon the shrubberies. “Hasn’t beauty come, Harlan?” she said. “Oh, it’s well enough here,” he grumbled, as they swept into their own deep-shaded driveway. Then they descended at white stone steps that led them up and out upon a terrace, and there they found the other member of their household sitting placidly—“to enjoy the bridal-wreath,” she said. “Isn’t it rather chilly for you outdoors, mother?” Harlan asked; for she was now so fragile that she seemed almost transparent. “Don’t you want to go in?” “No, not just yet,” she said. “I was just sitting here thinking how your father would have enjoyed all this. The town was pleasant when he and I were young, but of course it was never anything like this.” “No,” Harlan said, with satire. “I should say it wasn’t!” “It’s a great change,” the old lady continued. “I don’t suppose my mother could have believed how beautiful it would come to be.” “No,” Harlan said, with a short laugh. “I don’t believe she could!” She overlooked his sarcasm, or was unaware of it, for she went on: “I don’t suppose _I_ could believe how wonderful everything will be when my grandson gets to be as old as you are, Harlan.” But this thought made her wander from the subject. “I wish Lena would let him come home some day; I do want to see him;—I don’t want to go till I’ve seen him again.” Her voice became querulous, and then, with a habit she had formed in her old age, she began to talk more to herself than to her son and daughter-in-law, but for the most part in indistinct whispers. Her subject was still Henry, who had done well in the war, had been twice “decorated,” and now lived in Paris with his mother. The old lady murmured of him and of Lena for a little time; then fell into a reverie. Harlan joined his wife at the terrace wall. “Well, you’ve got a supporter in mother. _She_ seems to think it’s beautiful.” He pointed upward to where an opening through the foliage of tall beech trees left a vista of the sky; and there, against the evening blue, the thinning end of a plume of smoke, miles long, was visible. “Do you, really? Even that?” he asked. “Dan must have thought so,” she said. “I think he felt something in it that neither you nor I can understand.”