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FIDELIA

about at the sound of opening doors, he did not see her and she did not speak for an instant while she stood struck by the likeness of father Herrick's posture to David's when he was thoughtful.

Here was the same squareness of shoulder, the same lift of the head, the same pressure of vigor. The back of his head was identical with David's; it was long and handsomely modeled and forceful. But father Herrick's hair was not brown like David's but was black; it was cut in country fashion, rounded and not "feathered" at the back of the neck. Although father Herrick was fifty this summer, his hair was still nearly jet black; and his figure was spare and as straight as David's.

"Will you come in now, father Herrick?" Fidelia asked.

When he turned he looked old; he was looking much more than three years older than he had appeared when she first saw him, Fidelia thought. His face had become deeply lined and his mouth more habitually somber; but his eyes were the same, his dark, vigorous eyes. They never seemed satisfied with contours, as most men's were; they seemed to be always burrowing inside one and making one—at least they always made Fidelia—uncomfortable.

Never in the three years she had known him had he once told her that she was beautiful; never had he noticed, approvingly, any prettiness of her attire. He seemed always to make his own a rebuke to lightness and color; for habitually he wore a black suit and a white shirt with never a dot or line or design in the linen; he wore a stiff, wing collar with a white lawn tie