r world. When we were rushing through the water with the loud
noise of machinery in our ears, and the glassy screen of spray over our
heads, I lost my breath. I couldn't think clearly; but I supposed that
was all. I couldn't believe we should go up. But then came the spring,
and we were in the air, bounding higher--it was like something imagined
after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop.
Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and
leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget--never.
And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now,
for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the
shrinking is over."

Hannaford looked at her closely as she spoke. He was continually
thinking of death as a dark room, behind a shut door which he would
perhaps choose to open. He felt that he would like to talk to her some
day about what she really expected to find on the other side of the
door.

Nothing else was quite real to him in the scene, when everybody pressed
round Carleton, congratulating him on his machine and the exploit of
which the airman seemed to think little. It was not real when Schuyler
invited Hannaford and his two companions to crowd into the big car, and
be spun up the hill to Monte Carlo. He remembered the illumined look on
Mary's face (though it was gone now) and the faint ray of hope it had
sent into that secret place where his real self lived wearily.

XII

If Mary had died and waked up in another world, it could hardly have
been more of a contrast to her old existence than the new life at Monte
Carlo to the life at St. Ursula's-of-the-Lake.

And the Mary at Monte Carlo was a different person from the Mary at the
Scotch convent. She had a new set of thoughts and feelings of which she
would not have believed herself capable in Scotland. She would have been
surprised and shocked at them in another, a few weeks ago. Now she was
not shocked or surprised at them even in herself. They seemed natural
and familiar. She was at home with them all, and with her new self, not
even realizing that it was a new self. And she grew more beautiful, like
a flower taken from a dark northern corner of the garden and planted in
a sheltered, sunny spot.

She no longer thought of turning her back upon Monte Carlo in a few
days, and journeying on to Florence. She stayed, without making definite
plans; but she did not writ