Before very long however Mr.Juxon discovered that though it was a very simple thing to make such a determination it was a very different thing to keep it.

Mrs.Goddard interested him too much.

When he was with her he was perpetually longing to talk about herself instead of about the weather and the garden and the books, and once or twice he was very nearly betrayed into talking about himself, a circumstance so extraordinary that Mr.Juxon imagined he must be either ill or going mad, and thought seriously of sending for the doctor.

He controlled the impulse, however, and temporarily recovered; but strange to say from that time forward the conversation languished when he found himself alone with Mrs.Goddard, and it seemed very hard to maintain their joint interest in the weather, the garden and the books at the proper standard of intensity.

They had grown intimate, and familiarity had begun to breed a contempt of those petty subjects upon which their intimacy had been founded.