He began to think of this refuge of his, after he had walked a few minutes. He became conscious that, the longer he was alone with himself, the less agreeable he found the situation. There was a sentence of the professor's which repeated itself again and again, and made him feel restive; somehow he could not rid himself of the memory of it. "No man who had trifled with himself and his past could offer what is due to her." It was a simple enough truth, and he found nothing in it to complain of; but it was not an exhilarating thing to dwell upon and be haunted by. He stopped suddenly in the street and threw his cigar away. A half-laugh broke from him. "I am resenting it," he said. "It is making me as uncomfortable as if I was a human being, instead of a mechanical invention in the employ of the government. My works are getting out of order. I will go and see Mrs. Amory; she will give me something to think of. She always does." A few minutes later he entered the familiar parlor. The first object which met his eye was the figure of Bertha, and, as he had anticipated would be the case, she gave him something to think of. But it was not exactly the kind of thing he had hoped for, though it was something, it is true, which he had found himself confronted with once or twice before. It was something in herself, which on his first sight of her presented itself to him so forcibly that it gave him something very near a shock. He had evidently broken in upon some moment of absorbed thought. She was standing near the mantel, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes seeming fixed on space. The strangeness of her attitude struck him first, and then the unusualness of her dress, whose straight, long lines of unadorned black revealed, as he had never seen it revealed before, the change which had taken place in her. She dropped her hands when she saw him, but did not move toward him. "Did you meet Richard?" she said. "No," he replied. "Did he want to see me?" "He said something of the kind, though I am not quite sure what it was." Their eyes rested on each other as he approached her. In the questioning of hers there was a touch of defiance, but he knew its meaning too well to be daunted by it. "I would not advise you to wear that dress again," he said. "Why not?" she asked. "Go to the mirror and look at yourself," he said. She turned, walked across the room with a slow, careless step, as if the effort was scarcely worth while. There was an antique mirror on the wall, and she stopped before it and looked herself over. "It isn't wise, is it?" she said. "It makes me look like a ghost. No, it doesn't _make_ me look like one; it simply shows me as I am. It couldn't be said of me just now that I am at my best, could it?" Then she turned around. "I don't seem to care!" she said. "_Don't_ I care! That would be a bad sign in _me_, wouldn't it?"