After twenty years of happiness, of comradeship, of mutual dependence, after all that marriage could mean to two equal spirits, was there nothing left except ashes? Could twenty years of happiness be destroyed in an afternoon, in an hour? Stopping abruptly, with a jerk which ran like a spasm through her slender figure, she gazed with hard searching eyes over the red lilies into the mirror. The grave beauty of her face, a beauty less of flesh than of spirit, floated there in the shadows like a flower in a pond. “I am younger than he is by a year,” she thought, “and yet he can begin over again to love, while a new love for me would be desecration.” There was the sound of his step on the stair. An instant later his hand fell on the door, and he entered the room. Stooping swiftly, she picked up the letter from the rug and hid it in her bosom. Then turning toward him, she received his kiss with a smile. “I didn’t wait lunch for you,” she said. “I got it at the club.” After kissing her cheek, he moved to the fire and stood warming his hands. “Beastly day. No chance of golf, so I’ve arranged to see that man from Washington. You won’t get out, I suppose?” She shook her head. “No, I sha’n’t get out.” Did he know, she wondered, that this woman had written to her? Did he suspect that the letter lay now in her bosom? He had brought the smell of rain, the taste of dampness, with him into the room; and this air of the outer world enveloped him while he stood there, genial, robust, superbly vital, clothed in his sanguine temperament as in the healthy red and white of his flesh. Still boyish at forty-five, he had that look of perennial innocence which some men carry untarnished through the most enlightening experiences. Even his moustache and his sharply jutting chin could not disguise the softness that hovered always about his mouth, where she noticed now, with her piercing scrutiny, the muscles were growing lax. Strange that she had never seen this until she discovered that George loved another woman! The thought dashed into her mind that she knew him in reality no better than if she had lived with a stranger for twenty years. Yet, until a few hours ago, she would have said, had any one asked her, that their marriage was as perfect as any mating between a man and a woman could be in this imperfect world. “You’re wise. The wind’s still in the east, and there is no chance, I’m afraid, of a change.” He hesitated an instant, stared approvingly at the red lilies, and remarked abruptly, “Nice colour.” “You always liked red.” Her mouth lost its softness. “And I was pale even as a girl.” His genial gaze swept her face. “Oh, well, there’s red and red, you know. Some cheeks look best pale.”