 with, it seemed to him, a dignity that
distinguished her from ordinary women.
    There had been silence for a long time. They were alike in the custom of
forgetting what had last been said, or how long since.
    »Do you care for sculpture?« Mallard asked, led to the inquiry by his
thoughts of form and motion.
    »Yes; but not so much as for painting.«
    He noticed a reluctance in her voice, and for a moment was quite unconscious
of the reason for it. But reflection quickly explained her slight embarrassment.
    »Edward makes it one of his chief studies,« she added at once, looking
straight before her. »He has told me what to read about it.«
    Mallard let the subject fall. But presently they passed a yoke of oxen
drawing a cart, and, as he paused to look at them, he said:
    »Don't you like to watch those animals? I can never be near them without
stopping. Look at their grand heads, their horns, their majestic movement! They
always remind me of the antique - of splendid power fixed in marble. These are
the kind of oxen that Homer saw, and Virgil.«
    Miriam gazed, but said nothing.
    »Does your silence mean that you can't sympathize with me?«
    »No. It means that you have given me a new way of looking at a thing; and I
have to think.«
    She paused; then, with a curious inflection of her voice, as though she were
not quite certain of the tone she wished to strike, whether playful or
sarcastic:
    »You wouldn't prefer me to make an exclamation?«
    He laughed.
    »Decidedly not. If you were accustomed to do so, I should not be expressing
my serious thoughts.«
    The pleasant mood continued with him, and, a smile still on his face, he
asked presently:
    »Do you remember telling me that you thought I was wasting my life on
futilities?«
    Miriam flushed, and for an instant he thought he had offended her. But her
reply corrected this impression.
    »You admitted, I think, that there was much to be said for my view.«
    »Did I? Well, so there is. But the same conviction may be reached by very
different paths. If we agreed in that one result, I fancy it was the sole and
singular point of concord.«
    Miriam inquired diffidently:
    »Do you still think of most things just as you did then?«
    »Of most things, yes.
