The Reef

Calais her head had droppedback into

hanged soquickly. A moment since it had danced like a field ofdaisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallidoscillating light of the lamp overhead, it wore the

arents, she had found herself alone in a busyand indifferent world. Her youthful history might, in fact,have been summed up in the statement that everybody had beentoo busy to look after her. Her guardian, a drudge in a bigbanking house, was absorbed by "the office"; the guardian'swife, by her health and her religion; and an elder sister,Laura, married,

t would not be possible to extricate hisward's inheritance. No one deplored this more sincerelythan his widow, who saw in it one more proof of herhusband's life having been sacrificed

fher insignificant fortune. The latter had represented onlythe means of holding her in bondage, and its disappeara

ntions of theirfather's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot,against the express advice of her educational superiors, whoimplied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respecthad always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passionsat bay. The experi

urier, nursed theirailments at a fashionable bath. Darrow gathered that the"going round" with Mamie Hoke was a varied and divertingprocess; but this relatively brilliant phase of Sophy'scareer was c

ut so long in the dreadful house in Chelsea. TheFarlows, she explained to Darrow, were the best friends shehad ever had (and the only ones who had ever "been decent"about Laura, whom they had seen once, and intenselyadmired); but even after twenty years of Paris they were themost incorrigibly inexperienced angels, and quite persuadedthat Mrs. Murrett was a woman of great intellectualeminence, and the house a

bybitterness. Darrow perceived that she classified peopleaccording to their greater or less "luck" in life, but

le onecould only look on, and make the most of smal

igures. And at any moment, of course, a turn ofthe kaleidoscope mig

hat they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, hehad instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind,avoiding that intermediate society which attempts toconciliate both theories of life. "Bohemianism" seemed tohim a cheaper convention than the other two, and he liked,above all, people who went as far as they could in their ownline--lik

ht much about themsince his early love

s and dreamy pauses of his ownyoung heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctancesof hers. He had known a moment of anguish at losing her--themad plunge of youthful instincts against the barrier

l need of relatingthem to others. It was the girl in the opposite seat whohad roused in him the dormant habit of comparison. She wasdistinguished from the daughters of wealth by her avowedacquaintance with the r

e was neither surprise nor bewilderment inthe look. She seemed instantly conscious, not so much ofwhere she was, as of the fact that she was with him; andthat fact seemed enough to reassu

himself forward todefend their solitude; but the intruder was only a trainhand going his round of inspection. He passed on, and thelights and cries of the s

bove her forehead. The swaying of thetrain loosened a lock over her ear, and she sho

ired?"She shook her

very nearly ontime." He verified the stat

ly. "It's all right

and her eyes closed. It was very pleasantto Darrow that she made no effort to talk or to dissembleher sleepiness. He sat watching her till the upper lashesmet and

ssed; but her adaptability, herappropriateness, would not have been nature but "tact." Theoddness of the situation would have made sleep impossible,or, if weariness had overcome her for a moment,

contact with life. How much nearer to it had Mrs. Leathbeen brought by marriage and motherhood, and the passage off

at was like the unnaturalwhiten

eserves which had chilled their earlierintimacy. Once more they had had their hour together andshe had wasted it. As in her girlhood,

alone in the dark...His memory flew back to their youthfu

n, foreverpursuing without ever clasping each other. To this day hedid not quite know what had parted th

s just breathed and died. Why had ithappened thus, when the least shifting of influences mighthave made it all so different? If she

and now he saw her fated towane into old age repeating the same gestures, echoing thewords she had always heard, and perhaps never guessing that,just outs

rdone shoulder, and her lips were just far enough apart forthe reflection of the upper one to deepen the colour of theother. The jolting of the train had again shaken loos