A BIRD OF THE AIR When Paula had been three or four days wedded, it occurred to her to examine her husband's countenance.

They were at breakfast at Biarritz, and certain words that fell from Mr.Dalmaine, as he sat sideways from the table with his newspaper, led her eyes to rest for a few moments on his face.

He was smiling, but with depressed brows.

Paula noted the smile well, and it occupied her thoughts now and then during the day.
She was rather in want of something to think of just then, feeling a little lonely, and wishing her mother, or her brother, or somebody whom she really knew, were at hand to talk to.
It was with that same peculiar smile--the bushy eyebrows closing together, the lips very tight--that her husband approached her late one evening in the first week of May.

They were in their house in Kensington now; there had been a dinner party, the last guest was gone, and Paula sat in the drawing-room, thinking how she had impressed a certain polite old member of Parliament, a man whom it was worth while impressing.