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but a fast-fading memory on peeling canvas. But none, I felt quite certain, was fairer than Mary Will. The lights shone softly on her red-brown hair and on those white shoulders that were youth incarnate. She was wearing—well, I can’t describe it, but it was unquestionably the very dress she should have worn. Thank God she had it and had put it on! She came into the library, and the gloom and staleness fled, conquered, from the room.
“My dear—my dear!” Henry Drew met her, his eyes alight with admiration. “You are a picture, and no mistake. You carry me back—indeed you do—back to the time when these rooms were alive with youth and beauty.” He waved a hand to the portrait of a woman in the post of honor above the fireplace. “You are very like her. My first wife, you know.” He stood for a moment, pathetic, unhappy, weighed down by the years, more human than I had ever seen
