ONE:Keeling read this through once and once again before he passed to the consideration of the answer he would make to it. He found that it said very disagreeable things inoffensively, which seemed to him a feat, knowing that if he wrote a letter containing disagreeable news, the tone of his letter would be disagreeable also. He could not quite understand how it was done, but certainly he felt no kind of offence towards the writer.But other things extraneous to the temple had come in with him as he entered, like flies through an opened door, and still buzzed about him. His wifes want of comprehension was one of them. It was not often that Mrs Goodford had the power to annoy him so thoroughly as she had done to-day, but when she did, all that Emmeline had to contribute to the situation was such a sentence as, What a pity you and Mamma worry each other so. She did not understand, and though he told himself that in thirty years he should have got used to that, he found now and then, and to-day with unusual vividness, that he had not done so. She had never become a companion to him; he had never found in her that for which ultimately a man is seeking, though at the time he may not know it, when he goes a-wooing. A mouth, an eyebrow, the curve of a limb may be his lure, and having attained it he may think for a few years of passion that in gaining it he has gained what he sought, but unless he has indeed got that which unconsciously he desired, he will find some day when the gray ash begins to grow moss-like on his burning coals, that though his children{35} are round him, there is but a phantom opposite to him. The romance of passion has burned itself out, and from the ashes has no ph?nix arisen with whom he can soar to the sun. He desired the mouth or the eyebrow: he got them, and now in the changing lineaments he can scarcely remember what that which so strangely moved him was like, while in the fading of its brightness nothing else has emerged.
ONE:Here is the letter from Frank to his mother:
ONE:Norah looked not only surprised but startled, but she instantly recovered herself."There is an interesting display of the natural products of Japan, and it is exceedingly instructive to a stranger. The Japanese are studying these things with great attention, and the fair will undoubtedly prove an excellent school for the people by adding to their stock of information about themselves. Each section bears over its entrance the name of the city, province, or district it represents, and as these names are displayed in English as well as in Japanese, a stranger has no difficulty in finding out the products of the different parts of the empire. The result is that many articles are repeated in the exhibition, and you meet with them again and again. Such, for example, are raw silks, which come from various localities, as likewise do articles of leather, wood, and iron. Porcelain of various kinds appears repeatedly, and so do the woods used for making furniture. There is an excellent show of porcelain, and some of the pieces are of enormous size. Kaga, Satsuma, Hizen, Kioto, Nagasaki, and other wares are in abundance, and a student of ceramics will find enough to interest him for many hours.
