The sun was setting, and the trees on the Common, as yet showing but faintest signs of coming buds, stood out against the saffron sky. The long shadows stretched softly over the dull ground, while every slight prominence was gilded and transfigured by the golden glow which flooded from the west. The atmosphere had that peculiar brilliancy characteristic of the season, while the cool and bracing air was full of that champagne-like exhilaration in which lies at once the fascination and the fatality of the New England climate. It was some time before either broke the silence. "How I wish," at length began Helen wistfully. "That shows," spoke her husband, as she left the sentence unfinished, "that you are still under forty. When you have quadrupled your decades you'll thank your stars for deliverances and ask for nothing more." "When I get to that stage, then," she returned, "I'll take poison." "Is that a hint?" "Life is bad enough now," she continued without heeding the interruption, "but better a bitter savor than none at all." "You should devote yourself to cultivating the approval of conscience as I do. I only do what I think to be right, you know." "But think right whatever you do." "Not quite that," returned the Doctor with a laugh, "but the approval of my conscience--or of my reason, which stands in its place--is necessary to my happiness, so I change my principles whenever my acts don't accord with them." "So do a great many persons," she responded; "perhaps most of us, for that matter, only we are seldom honest enough to own it." "By the way," queried her companion, as they approached her destination, "how came Mrs. Fenton so quickly domesticated at the Church of the Nativity?" "There is a young man there--a deacon or a monk; I never know these high church terms; they are usually faded out pieces of Romanism--that once wrote an article which enjoyed the honor of being interred in the Princeton Review when her uncle was one of its editors." They reached the doorsteps and Dr. Ashton said good-by. Then he turned back. "By the by," he said. "I walked up with you to make you invite me to supper again. I enjoyed the last time very much." "Did you?" returned his wife, rather carelessly. "Come to-morrow--no, not until Thursday night." "Very well. I am to dine here then, and I'll come and give you an account of my visit." XXIII. HEART-SICK WITH THOUGHT. Two Gentlemen of Verona; i.--I. The Fentons were just going to dinner when Helen arrived, and she was persuaded to dine with them. She was not without some curiosity to observe her friend in his new relations, and she also found herself attracted by Edith, although the two women had apparently little in common.