ng a pair of gloves.
People in the shops are very polite and people in the world are like
people in the shops. What did she know of the world? She had seen it
only from the saddle. Oh, she will get your cargo released for you all
right. How will she do it? . . Well, when it's done--you follow me,
Mills?--when it's done she will hardly know herself."

"It's hardly possible that she shouldn't be aware," Mills pronounced
calmly.

"No, she isn't an idiot," admitted Mr. Blunt, in the same matter-of-fact
voice. "But she confessed to myself only the other day that she suffered
from a sense of unreality. I told her that at any rate she had her own
feelings surely. And she said to me: Yes, there was one of them at least
about which she had no doubt; and you will never guess what it was.
Don't try. I happen to know, because we are pretty good friends."

At that moment we all changed our attitude slightly. Mills' staring eyes
moved for a glance towards Blunt, I, who was occupying the divan, raised
myself on the cushions a little and Mr. Blunt, with half a turn, put his
elbow on the table.

"I asked her what it was. I don't see," went on Mr. Blunt, with a
perfectly horrible gentleness, "why I should have shown particular
consideration to the heiress of Mr. Allegre. I don't mean to that
particular mood of hers. It was the mood of weariness. And so she told
me. It's fear. I will say it once again: Fear. . . ."

He added after a pause, "There can be not the slightest doubt of her
courage. But she distinctly uttered the word fear."

There was under the table the noise of Mills stretching his legs.

"A person of imagination," he began, "a young, virgin intelligence,
steeped for nearly five years in the talk of Allegre's studio, where
every hard truth had been cracked and every belief had been worried into
shreds. They were like a lot of intellectual dogs, you know . . ."

"Yes, yes, of course," Blunt interrupted hastily, "the intellectual
personality altogether adrift, a soul without a home . . . but I, who am
neither very fine nor very deep, I am convinced that the fear is
material."

"Because she confessed to it being that?" insinuated Mills.

"No, because she didn't," contradicted Blunt, with an angry frown and in
an extremely suave voice. "In fact, she bit her tongue. And considering
what good friends we are (under fire together and all that) I conclude
that there is nothing there to boast of. Neither