everybody is! I know what it is. You'd like to see me brought down to your level."

"Good-night, Miss Regan. You will apologize in the morn

ing."

"Don't glare. The level of womanhood, if you like. You've loved a man."

Eleanor's face flushed. "That is the height of womanhood, Olive."

She

"Oh yes-fine phrases! The height of womanhood!" drew a comb fiercely through her hair. "To hang on a man's lips, to feel a foolish sense of blankness when he isn't there, and a great wave of joyful pain when he heaves in sight again. To kiss his every little note! To think of him and your trivial self as the centre of the universe, and to want the planets to spin for your joint happiness-oh!" She pulled the comb viciously through a knot.

"You describe it very accurately, Olive," said her friend, maliciously.

"I'm quoting the novels. This passion that they crack up so much seems nothing more than selfishness at compound interest."

"Selfishness! When you yourself say it makes you yearn for the other person's happiness."

"So that it may subserve yours."

"You are a cynic."

"What is a cynic? An accurate observer of life. Oh, you needn't smile. I know I'm quoting, but one can't put quotation marks into one's conversation. You can't face the facts of life, Nor. You like dull people without insight.'

"I like you."

"That's too cheap. You like socialists and spiritualists and poets and painters-the whole spawn of idealists. Bah! They ought to have a month's experience of a hospital."

"The world isn't a hospital ward, Olive. The people I like have the truer insight."

"What insight has your Matthew Strang?"

"He is as much yours as mine."

"Don't shuffle out of the question."

"His insight expresses itself through his work. He doesn't talk."

"Is that a hit at his cousin?" queried Olive, savagely. "If so, it falls remarkably flat, considering Herbert Strang paints as well as talks."

"Olive, why will you put words into my mouth? You know how much I admire Herbert Strang."

"Ah, then you have more insight than I gave you credit for. You may even understand that a cynic is only a disappointed idealist, a saint plus insight. His soul is a palace of truth; society and its shams come to the test, yield up their implicit falseness, and are scornfully rejected. The stroke of wit is made with the sword of judgment. Its shaft is the lightning of righteous indignation."

Mrs. Wyndwood felt this might pass well enough for an analysis of Olive's own cynicism, but she had her doubts as to its applicability to Herbert's.

Olive puzzled her frequently, and shocked her not seldom, but she felt instinctively that hers were the aberrations of a noble nature, while the cynicisms of Herbert jarred upon her without such reassurance of sweet bells jangled. Not that she doubted but that he, too, was much more idealistic than he made himself out-did he not write charming comedy love-scenes? Still he was a man who had seen the world, not a crude girl like Olive, and in the face of Olive's affectionate analysis of Herbert-which she rightly divined owed less to reason than to the growing love for him which she had long suspected in her turbulent friend-Eleanor felt vaguely that while jarring notes may be struck from the soundest keyboard, they may also be the index of an instrument hopelessly out of tune. Of course Herbert was not that, she was sure; he lacked Matthew's idealism and manly beauty, but he was handsome, too, in his daintier way, and charming and gifted, and probably the very husband to put an end to Olive's psychical growing-pains. All this mixture of acute and feeble insight occupied Eleanor's consciousness.

But all she said was, "Is that Emerson?"

"No, it's me. Now go to bed and sleep on it."

"I sha'n't. I couldn't sleep on anything so hard. Dear me, what a lot of hair-pins you have! What nice ones! I must borrow some."

"Take them all and go."

"Not yet."

"I shall blow out the candles," snapped Olive.

"I love talking in the dark. I'm pining for feminine conversation to soothe my overwrought nerves. How pretty that lace is!" Eleanor touched her friend's shoulder cajolingly. "What exquisite things you have! Everything-from hair-pins to carving-knives-perfect after its kind, like the animals that went into the ark. It will be difficult to give you a wedding present." Olive laughed, despite herself.

"The only wedding present a woman wants is a husband." "You have had plenty of those presents offered you, dear." Olive shuddered violently. "Imagine existence with a Guardsman or worse!—with that doddering young Duke! Dulness without idealism. Your Matthew Strang is endurable—he has at least the family idealism, the Strang goodness, though he carries it so much more heavily than his cousin. But a lifetime with a dull man-who wouldn't understand a joke-who would smile and smile and be a hypocrite! Oh, ye gods! I should shriek! In a year I should be in a lunatic asylum, or the Divorce Court. Oh, why do you women who have been through the mill egg us girls on? Is it the same instinct that makes an ex-fag send his boy to Eton? Or do you think it improves our health? I know you think me hysterical."

Mrs. Wyndwood flushed.

"Your tongue runs away with you, Olive. You'd do better to say your prayers. I'll leave you to them."

Olive laughed hilariously. "Aha! I thought that would get you to go. You always will forget that I've been in a hospital. Say my prayers, eh? Let me see, what shall I say? The one I used to say in the hospital, O Lord, I beseech Thee, let not this be counted unto me for righteousness, for Thou knowest, O Lord, that I can't help it.' But that's not applicable now. Suppose I say just what's in my heart, as the theologians recommend." She went down on her knees and said solemnly:

Lord, don't you think you are sometimes a little hard upon us? Don't you think we are born into a very confusing world? It would be so easy to do Thy will, to make Thy will our will, if we only knew what it was. Don't you think that half our life that might be devoted to Thy service is wasted because of the mist through which we grope, bearing the offering of our life in quest of we know not what Divine altar, and blurring the road more thickly with our tears?" She sprang up. "How's that for an addition to the Liturgy, Nor?"

"I am disgusted," said Mrs. Wyndwood, sternly. blasphemous and ungrammatical."

"Both

Olive threw herself back on the bed, laughing unrestrainedly: "You delightful, stupid old thing. Ha! ha! ha! Blasphemous and ungrammatical! You Dissenting Hellenist! Sacrilege and Syntax! Ha! ha! ha! No, you sha'n't escape. You must abide the question. Tell me, O friend of my soul, why do women who have been unhappily married want to see other women victimized equally, like people who have been fooled in a penny show and come out laughing to beguile the other people?" "That's not a fair analogy," said Eleanor, more gently.

Olive looked up archly, her arms under her head.

No, perhaps not in your case. I dare say you're quite capable of marrying again, yourself. The triumph of hope over experience. Quotation marks, please. You're looking awfully handsome, Nor, and that saucy tilt of your nose spoils you for a saint. Speaking as an ex-sculptress, it's like a blunt pencil." She sprang up remorsefully: "Oh, I'm a beast. I apologize to your nose. I forgot the tip was a sore point."

Mrs. Wyndwood drew back in sorrowful hauteur. "I shall never marry again, Olive," she said, solemnly. There was an under-tone of self-pity, and her eyes were moist. She turned hastily and walked from the room with a firm, stately step.

Olive watched the sweep of the gown till it reached the door. Then she gave chase and renewed her apologies, and let Eleanor sob out sweet reconciliation on her shoulder.

After which she opened the window, sat on the side of the bed, and screwed up her ripe red lips to produce a perplexed whistle.

437

CHAPTER VII

THE IDYL CONCLUDES

THEY fleeted the days delightfully, as men did in the golden world. They rode together on the rolling moors, they drove through the Devonshire lanes, they strolled through combe and copse, they climbed the tors, they fished the leys, they swam in the sea, and when it was cloudy and cold, and the wind wailed about the house like a woman in pain, they listened to the comedy which Herbert wrote in those dreary days when the ladies drove off to distant houses for lunch or tennis or croquet. For they had not quite hidden their retreat or detached themselves from their kind.

"There's always scandal within a four-mile radius," as Miss Regan put it. "Is there on earth a greater piece of philanthropy than to give your neighbors food for gossip! Man cannot live by bread alone." Matthew asked her in concern if his and Herbert's visits were causing any talk.

"My dear Mr. Matthew," she replied, scornfully, "even an actress cannot escape scandal, especially if she goes into society. And truly society is so corrupt, I have often wondered that actresses' mothers allow them to go into it!"

During one of these absences of the feminine element, when Herbert went over to the house to put the last touches to the painted costume, grumbling at the boredom of such finicking work, Matthew gladly relieved him of the brush, and worked up the whole portrait, while Herbert lay smoking and thinking out the comedy.

Partly out of bravado, partly to enjoy the series of lovely views of dark-green sea and broken crags and nestling villages, the cousins invariably arrived by the cliff-path, seeing the black