dead face. ‘To live so as to regret nothing!’ It must have been a young man who said that. A man, anyway. Remorse as man’s prerogative! Nature. It was in Nature that girls hid themselves and covered their heads. Nature has no remorse. Nature has no ‘substance’ behind her thought. Thoughts without ‘substance.’ One⁠ ⁠… two⁠ ⁠… three⁠ ⁠… Three drops of acid in a grooved, waxed pattern? The girl smiled into her mother’s mirror. Thoughts without ‘substance.’ Butterfly-wings quivering. Unconscious signals. Little fool: The old man meant nothing at all. It was all your⁠—”

Wolf was interrupted in his reading by the sound of a door slamming below and by quick steps upon the stairs. He closed the exercise-book and thrust it back. In his haste, however, he put it a shelf higher. Not only so, but he left it lying on the top of books instead of among them. Then he went over to the fireplace.⁠ ⁠…

Christie came rushing in, her arms full of packages, her face glowing with the self-satisfaction of a girl who has done some adroit shopping.