For reasons of her own she emphasized the domestic side of her life and fairly awed the stern youth by her womanly dignity and grace.

The little table was set for two, with pretty dishes.

Liquor had no place on the cover, but a shining tea-pot, brought in by a smiling negress, was placed at her right hand.

Her talk for a time was of the tea, the food, his taste as to sugar and other things pertaining to her duties as hostess.

All his lurid imaginings of her faded into the wind, and a thousand new and old conceptions of wife and home and peaceful middle age came thronging like sober-colored birds.