It was the same feeling that had come to him on the Angiolina steps, at Abbazia.

He even wondered if in the stress of the life they were now following she would lose the last of her good looks, if even her ever-resilient temperament would deaden and harden, and no longer rise supreme to the exacting moment.

Or could it be that she was acting a part for him?
that all this fine _bravado_ was an attitude, a role, a pretense, taken on for his sake?
Could it be--and the sudden thought stung him to the quick--that she was deliberately and consciously degrading herself to what she knew was a lower plane of thought and life, that the bond of their older companionship might still remain unsevered?
But, as her startled eyes caught sight of him, a welcoming light came into her relaxed face.

With her first spoken word some earlier touch of moroseness seemed to slip away from her.

If it required an effort to shake herself together, she gave no outward sign of it.