, if these things ought to
be probed--and Janet was not of serious opinion that they
ought to be--for her part she preferred to obtain advices
thereon from between admissible and respectable book-covers.
It hurt her to hear them drop from Elfrida's lips--lips
so plainly meant for all tenderness. Janet had an instinct
of helpless anger when she heard them; the woman in her
rose in protest, less on behalf of her sex than on behalf
of Elfrida herself, who seemed so blind, so willing to
revile, so anxious to reject. "Do you really hope you
will marry?" Elfrida had asked her once; and Janet had
answered candidly, "Of course I do, and I want to die a
grandmother too." "_Vraiment!_" exclaimed Miss Bell
ironically, with a little shudder of disgust, "I hope
you may!"

That was in the very beginning of their friendship,
however, and so vital a subject could not remain, outside
the relations which established themselves more and more
intimately between them as the days went on. Janet began
to find herself constantly in the presence of a temptation
to bring the matter home to Elfrida personally in one
way or another, as young women commonly do with other
young women who are obstinately unorthodox in these
things--to say to her in effect, "Your turn will come
when _he_ comes! These pseudo-philosophies will vanish
when _he_ looks at them, like snow in spring. You will
succumb--you will succumb!" But she never did. Something
in Elfrida's attitude forbade it. Her opinions were not
vagaries, and she held them, so far as they had a personal
application, haughtily. Janet felt and disliked the tacit
limitation, and preferred to avoid the clash of their
opinions when she could. Besides, her own ideas upon the
subject had latterly retired irretrievably from the light
of discussion. She had one day found it necessary to lock
the door of her soul upon them; in the new knowledge that
had taken sweet possession of her she recognized that
they were no longer theoretical, that they must be put
away. She challenged herself to sit in a jury upon Love,
and found herself disqualified.

The discovery had no remarkable effect upon Janet. She
sometimes wasted an hour, pen in hand, in inconsequent
reverie, and worked till midnight to make up; and she
took a great liking for impersonal conversations with
Miss Halifax about Kendal's pictures, methods and meanings.
She found dining in Royal Geographical circles less of
a bore than usual, and delibe