heaved a great sigh of relief. "Oh, I'm so thankful not to be a model
any more! It's lovely to begin life again, away from criticism, to be
free to do and think what I like!"

He stared at her, his eyes intent and searching beneath puckered brows.
It was a handsome, almost a beautiful face into which he looked: the
softened light, the happy mood, even the floating ends of hair combined
to give it an air of unusual youth. Nevertheless there were lines
written thereon which told their own tale. Katrine noticed his
scrutiny, and questioned him thereon:

"What are you thinking about?"

"You," he said simply. "We are talking about ourselves. You are so
young in many ways, younger than your years, but you look--"

"Older?"

"Yes," he said again, serenely unconscious of offence. "It's not a
girl's face. There are the marks of trouble, of suffering..."

Katrine sighed. On her lips flickered a smile which was strangely
pathetic.

"Or of lack of trouble!" she corrected. "Oh, I mean it. It sounds
incomprehensible to a man, but a woman would understand. Trouble would
be easier to bear than the grey, monotonous routine month after month,
year after year, which women have to live in small country towns.
Trouble is educational and ennobling; monotony cramps growth at the
roots. I am twenty-six, but there were women ten years older, still
young, still pretty, jogtrotting along the same path, year after year,
year after year. _Nothing had happened to them_! No man can understand
all that that means. _Nothing had happened_!"

Bedford straightened himself significantly.

"They should _make_ things happen!"

"Perhaps in time to come they may, when they are more developed--they,
and their parents! Many well-to-do parents think that their daughters
ought to be contented to stay peacefully at home and arrange the
flowers. I _had_ a real duty, but in some families nearby there were
three or four women-girls _pottering_! I went to see one of them on her
birthday last year. When I wished her many happy returns she shrank, as
if I had hurt her. `Another year!' she said. `Three hundred and
sixty-five days... _And all alike_!' It was fear that she felt, poor
soul; fear of the blank! You can't understand."

"Personally, no. Monotony has not been my cross. When a man is
knocking about the world he is inclined to envy the people who can
vegetate peacefully at home, but thirty-six years of stagnation is a
killin