"It would not be a bad idea for him to conceal his pedestal about him and mount it when it became necessary for him to remain stationary," said Arbuthnot, flippantly, and yet with a momentary gravity in his eyes somewhat at variance with his speech. She went on as if he had not spoken. "It was certainly a curious feeling," she continued. "Everything came to me in a flash. I suppose I am rather a light and frivolous person, not sufficiently given to reflecting on the passage of time, and suddenly there he stood, and I remembered that eight years had gone by, and that everything was changed." "A great many things can happen in eight years," commented Arbuthnot. "A great many things have happened to _me_," she said. "_Everything_ has happened to me!" "No," said Arbuthnot, in a low, rather reflective tone, and looking as he spoke not at her, but at the girl whose white dress did not fit, and who at that moment whirled rather breathlessly by the door. "No--not everything." "I have grown from a child to a woman," she said. "I have married, I have arrived at maternal dignity. I don't see that there is anything else that could happen--at least, anything comfortable." "No," he admitted. "I don't think there is anything comfortable." "Well, it is very certain I don't want to try anything uncomfortable," she said. "'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.' Montesquieu says that, and it always struck me as meaning something." "I hope it does not mean that you consider your annals tiresome," said Arbuthnot. "How that girl does dance! This is the fifth time she has passed the door." "I hope her partner likes it as much as she does," remarked Bertha. "And as to the annals, I have not found them tiresome at all, thank you. As we happen to have come to retrospect, I think I may say that I have rather enjoyed myself, on the whole. I have had no tremendous emotions." "On which you may congratulate yourself," Arbuthnot put in. "I do," she responded. "I know I should not have liked them. I have left such things to--you, for instance." She said this with a little air of civil mocking which was by no means unbecoming, and to which her companion was well used. "Thank you," he replied, amiably. "You showed consideration, of course--but that's your way." "I may not have lived exactly the kind of life I used to think I should live--when I was a school-girl," she went on, smiling; "but who does?--and who would want to when she attained years of discretion? And I may not be exactly the kind of person I--meant to be; but I think I may congratulate you on that--and Richard. You would never have been the radiant creatures you are if I had ripened to that state of perfection. You could not have borne up under it." She rose from her seat and took his arm.