To do so would
have been lacking in respect for his work. It was on this that she
must concentrate her whole mind, privileged auditor that she was. She
sat looking straight before her, with her lips slightly compressed,
and her hands folded on her lap. I used to wonder that there had been
that first moment when I did not think her pretty. Her eyes were of a
very light hazel, seeming all the lighter because her hair was of so
dark a brown; and they were beautifully set in a face of that `pinched
oval' kind which is rather rare in England. Mary as listener would
have atoned to me for any defects there may have been in dear old
William's work. Nevertheless, I sometimes wished this work had some
comic relief in it. Publishers, I believe, shared this wish; hence the
eternal absence of William's name from among their announcements. For
Mary's sake, and his, I should have liked him to be `successful.' But
at any rate he didn't need money. He didn't need, in addition to what
he had, what he made by his journalism. And as for success--well,
didn't Mary think him a genius? And wasn't he Mary's husband? The main
reason why I wished for light passages in what he read to us was that
they would have been cues for Mary's laugh. This was a thing always
new to me. I never tired of that little bell-like euphony; those funny
little lucid and level trills.
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