A Fountain Sealed

to each other's excesses or lacks of grief. And as he waited for Imogen in the long drawing-room that had be

The inner half could be shut away by folding-doors, and its highly polished sideboard, chairs, table, a silver épergne towering upon it, glimmered in a dusky element that relegated it, when not illuminated for use, to a mere ghostly decorativeness. By contrast, the drawing-room was vivid. Its fringed and buttoned furniture,-crimson brocade set in a dark carved wood, the dangling lusters of the huge chandelier, the elaborate Sèvres vases on the mantelpiece, flanking a bronze clock portentously gloomy, expressed old Mrs. Upton's richly solid

to small, happy minor uses. Mr. Upton and his daughter had not changed it because they had other things to think of; and they thought of these things not in the drawing-room but in the large library up-stairs. There one could find the personal touches, that, but for the cope, the cabi

two portraits. He had often so paused while waitin

as in his attitude, in his dark hair, tossed carelessly, in the unnecessarily weighty and steady look of his dark eyes, even in the slight smile of his firm, full lips, a smile too well-adapted, as it were, to the needs of any interlocutor. Beneath his arm was a book; a long, distinguished hand hanging slackly. Jack turned away with a familiar impatience

with sincerity as it were, a frivolous convention. This was Miss Cray, a year or so before her marriage with Mr. Upton. The portrait had been painted in Paris, where, orphaned, lovely, but not largely dowered, she had, under the wing of an aunt domiciled in France for many years and bearing one of its oldest names, failed to make the brilliant match that had been hoped for her. This touch of France in girlhood echoed an earlier impress. Imogen had told him that her mother had been educated for some years in a French convent, deposited there by pleasure-loving parents during European wanderings, and Imogen had intimated that her mother's frequent returns to her native land had never quite effaced alien and regrettable points of view. Before th

n chill complacency. Such a butterfly girl, falling with, perhaps, bruised wings from the high, hard glare of worldly ambitions, more of others for her than her own for herself

lding black she was serene and the look of untroubled force he knew so well was in her eyes. She had taken the measure of the grown-up butterfly and found it easy of management. He felt with relief that the mother

d and they had seated themselves on the sofa that stretched along th

ely, not quite sure fo

that was such real kindness in you, Jack, dear. I couldn't have pretended gaiety, but

. "By there not b

t it so. To see he

yet, at the same time,

know. One smiles involuntarily at a meeting, however sad its b

his sense of mitigations and she answered without a pause: "Ye

t you had a r

red itself. And she went on: "I was ready, you know, to help her to bear it all, with my whole strength; but, and it i

which, with Imogen, he never ventured. He had brought from his study of

n I've ever done. I've never come so near. Never seen so clearly how little there is to see. She's still essentially

," Jack suggested ra

ly thing," s

though. There is, I'm very sure, m

d want all the happy, the easy things of life? It is sensible, of course, clearly to know what they are, and firml

so much more clear-sighted, so much more clever than himself when it came to judgments and insights, that he

my mother." Her eyes, with no hardness, no reproach, probed him,

hat it's only to a friend who so understands you

riend, indeed," s

sked her, atoning to himself for the mo

rom my seeing all her efforts to keep them soft; a

has there b

him with a thoughtful openness that, he felt

ything, everything,

e feared?-that she'll

m to accept. But she's against my c

hat will make it easy for you. There

the surface; but it's that that will be so hard for

ots. How can you expect anything but effort now, in this s

find it hard, I don't face it; don't think that through it all I haven't my faith. That is just what

over-right that she almost irked and irritated him, dear and beloved as she was. One could only call it over-rightness, for wasn't what she said the simple truth, just as he had always seen it, just as she had always known that, with her, he saw it? She had this queer, light burden sud

" he asked, turning hastily fro

m with such confidence, made him

side of life. And she has seen the dear Delancy Pottses, too, and was very nice to them, one of the cases of seeming to accept; I saw well enough that they were no more to her than quaint insects she must do her duty by. And she has been very busy

must take her down to the girls' club some day," he suggested, "and to see your cripples and all the

would be a very wise experiment. Such an ondulée, parfumée, polished per

armingly, yourself

hes, why, they are of any time you will." She swept aside her wing-like sleeves to show the Mad

olish girl? She wants to wea

the unattainable perfection of

envy, yo

gen, now altogether in her lighter, happier mood, "but since

eling that though her humor a little jarred on him he could do nothing b

mpathizes with the American freedom as to friendships between men and women, so that she vacates the drawing-room for my p

soon, if the answer to a certain question that he wanted to ask Imogen were what he hoped for. But t