"Doesn't it look a different place without her!" said Angus, glancing round the trim little kitchen—"As neat as a pin, of course, but all the life gone from it."
Helmsley smiled, but did not answer. Seating himself in his armchair, he spread out his thin old hands to the bright fire, and watched Reay as he stood near the hearth, leaning one arm easily against a rough beam which ran across the chimney piece.
"She is a wonderful woman!" went on Reay, musingly; "She has a power of which she is scarcely conscious."
"And what is that?" asked Helmsley, slowly rubbing his hands with quite an abstracted air.
Angus laughed lightly, though a touch of colour reddened his bronzed cheeks.
"The power that the old alchemists sought and never could find!" he answered—"The touch that transmutes common metals to fine gold, and changes the every-day prose of life to poetry."
Helmsley went on rubbing his hands slowly.
"It's so extraordinary, don't you think, David,"—he continued—"that there should be such a woman as Miss Mary alive at all?"
Helmsley looked up at him questioningly, but said nothing.
"I mean,"—and Angus threw out his hand with an impetuous gesture—"that considering all the abominable, farcical tricks women play nowadays, it is simply amazing to find one who is contented with a simple life like this, and who manages to make that simple life so gracious and beautiful!"