But, no doubt, she had been more in his mind than he in hers, and a meeting with her was for him an eventuality not at all remote. There was more of pleasure than of embarrassment in that first look in which he recognised the wife of Curtis Jadwin. The artist had changed no whit in the four years since last she had seen him. He seemed as young as ever; there was the same "elegance" to his figure; his hands were just as long and slim as ever; his black beard was no less finely pointed, and the mustaches were brushed away from his lips in the same French style that she remembered he used to affect. He was, as always, carefully dressed. He wore a suit of tweeds of a foreign cut, but no overcoat, a cloth cap of greenish plaid was upon his head, his hands were gloved in dogskin, and under his arm he carried a slender cane of varnished brown bamboo. The only unconventionality in his dress was the cravat, a great bow of black silk that overflowed the lapels of his coat. But she had no more than time to register a swift impression of the details, when he came quickly forward, one hand extended, the other holding his cap. "I cannot tell you how glad I am," he exclaimed. It was the old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, as always, since first she had known him, was tucked into his sleeve at the wrist. "And so you are back again," she cried. "And when, and how?" "And so--yes--so I am back again," he repeated, as they shook hands. "Only day before yesterday, and quite surreptitiously. No one knows yet that I am here. I crept in--or my train did--under the cover of night. I have come straight from Tuscany." "From Tuscany?" "--and gardens and marble pergolas." "Now why any one should leave Tuscan gardens and--and all that kind of thing for a winter in Chicago, I cannot see," she said. "It is a little puzzling," he answered. "But I fancy that my gardens and pergolas and all the rest had come to seem to me a little--as the French would put it--_malle._ I began to long for a touch of our hard, harsh city again. Harshness has its place, I think, if it is only to cut one's teeth on." Laura looked down at him, smiling. "I should have thought you had cut yours long ago," she said. "Not my wisdom teeth," he urged. "I feel now that I have come to that time of life when it is expedient to have wisdom." "I have never known that feeling," she confessed, "and I live in the 'hard, harsh' city."