He laughed. "I only wish you would." "Really? Then why do you let so many good times crawl under your Juggernaut of solemnity?" "Because the Vishnu of the land of the glassy stare demands it, I suppose. I'm not altogether Americanized yet." And again he laughed. "Does that mean you're saying anything against my country?" demanded Mrs. Spaulding. "On the contrary, that I am looking to your country for my reformation. I'd really like to be shaken out of that shell you speak of." "Well, New York ought to do that for you." "I think it is doing it." "But it's like your accent; it goes slowly." Mrs. Spaulding had seated herself, and was looking at him with her elbows on the table and a meditative chin buried in her thick boa. "I think you ought to fall in love." She repeated it, with conviction, and then suddenly, asked him: "Haven't you ever been that way?" He looked at her with a face both serious and, she thought, unnecessarily chilling. "There, I told you--the shell!" she cried warningly. "Tell me, now, weren't you ever in love?" A barrier, impregnable as steel, a barrier beaten out by all the years of an existence uncomprehended and a secrecy unrespected, fell between them. A sense of his isolation, a touch of the sorrow of the alien, crept over him. And as he looked at the woman who thus questioned him it seemed very long ago, and very far away, that old life, and those old days amid the soft Oxfordshire hills. Mrs. Spaulding put out her hand to him, unexpectedly. "I'm afraid you're going to be very lonely here at first," she said. "I have my work," he answered wearily--though the thought of it came almost with joy. "But you can't live by work alone. And if you'll let us, I thought we might give you a little house-warming. Won't you let Cordelia and me join you in your first dinner here?" Mrs. Spaulding had made a discovery. She had found that her scholar responded only to sincerity, but then, inevitably; and here she had been assailing him with her levity. She mentioned the many little details of how they should have their dinner prepared. Then she turned to him, and added, as an after-thought: "Cordelia is a beautiful character, isn't she?" Whereupon, as though fearing his reply, she suddenly looked at her little jeweled watch, and cried with horror: "Good heavens, I'm late for my sitting!" and rustled out to her waiting carriage, not altogether unhappy to get away. CHAPTER XIV THE FIRE IN THE CLEARING She in twined gold all helmeted, Cuirassed in yielding rose, Let fall from lips of wanton red Three little words, like blows; And laughed where swayed his spear aloft, For she no arms did wear, And her slim body white and soft Of steel and mail was bare! JOHN HARTLEY, "The Broken Knight." We prefer our pessimists young and tender, like asparagus; ten years older and what a bore even Hamlet might have been!--"The Silver Poppy."