woods.

* * * * *

Stephen rose fresh and in good spirits, despite her sleepless night. When
youth and strength are to the fore, a night's sleep is not of much
account, for the system once braced up is not allowed to slacken. It was
a notable sign of her strong nature that she was not even impatient, but
waited with calm fixity the hour at which she had asked Leonard Everard
to meet her. It is true that as the time grew closer her nerve was less
marked. And just before it she was a girl--and nothing more; with all
girl's diffidence, a girl's self-distrust, a girl's abnegation, a girl's
plasticity.

In the more purely personal aspect of her enterprise Stephen's effort was
more conscious. It is hardly possible for a pretty woman to seek in her
study of perfection the aid of her mirror and to be unconscious of her
aims. There must certainly be at least one dominant purpose: the
achievement of success. Stephen did not attempt to deny her own beauty;
on the contrary she gave it the fullest scope. There was a certain
triumph in her glance as she took her last look in her mirror; a
gratification of her wish to show herself in the best way possible. It
was a very charming picture which the mirror reflected.

It may be that there is a companionship in a mirror, especially to a
woman; that the reflection of oneself is an emboldening presence, a
personality which is better than the actuality of an unvalued stranger.
Certainly, when Stephen closed the door and stood in the wainscoted
passage, which was only dimly lit by the high window at either end, her
courage seemed at once to ooze away.

Probably for the first time in her life, as she left the shade of the
long passage and came out on the staircase flooded with the light of the
noonday sun, Stephen felt that she was a girl--'girl' standing as some
sort of synonym for weakness, pretended or actual. Fear, in whatever
form or degree it may come, is a vital quality and must move. It cannot
stand at a fixed point; if it be not sent backward it must progress.
Stephen felt this, and, though her whole nature was repugnant to the
task, forced herself to the effort of repression. It would, she felt,
have been to her a delicious pleasure to have abandoned all effort; to
have sunk in the lassitude of self-surrender.

The woman in her was working; her sex had found her out!

She turned and looked around her, as though conscious of being watched.
Then, seeing that she was