eve them of their ugly regularity, each with the self-same windows,
the self-same door, the self-same door-step. Overhead a drift of smoke,
and every little green thing down to the plants in the window dirty and
black. The sort of street whence any crazy religious charlatan who can
promise a little colour to their grey lives can get as many votaries as
he wants. Well, when I thought over my life, one of those little streets
always came into my mind. There are women, heaps of them, no doubt, to
whom the management of a big house, the season in London, the ordinary
round of visits, are sufficient. I, worse luck, was not one of them.
Dull! You, with your hundred thousand things to do, cannot conceive how
oppressively dull my life was. And that was not all!" She hesitated, but
she could not stop midway, and it was far too late for her to recover
her ground. She went on to the end.

"I married, as I say, knowing nothing of the important things. I
believed at the first that mine was just the allotted life of all women.
But I began soon to have my doubts. I got to know that there was
something more to be won out of existence than mere dulness; at least,
that there was something more for others, though not for me. One could
not help learning that. One passed a man and a woman riding together,
and one chanced to look into the woman's face as one passed; or one saw,
perhaps, the woman alone and talked with her for a little while, and
from the happiness of her looks and voice one knew with absolute
certainty that there was ever so much more. Only the chance of that
ever so much more my mother had denied to me."

All the sternness had now gone from Durrance's face, and Mrs. Adair was
speaking with a great simplicity. Of the violence which she had used
before there was no longer any trace. She did not appeal for pity, she
was not even excusing herself; she was just telling her story quietly
and gently.

"And then you came," she continued. "I met you, and met you again. You
went away upon your duties and you returned; and I learnt now, not that
there was ever so much more, but just what that ever so much more was.
But it was still, of course, denied to me. However, in spite of that I
felt happier. I thought that I should be quite content to have you for a
friend, to watch your progress, and to feel pride in it. But you
see--Ethne came, too, and you turned to her. At once--oh, at once! If
you had only been a little less quick to tur