rimmed over and fell on her friend's
hand.

Vanna brushed it away with impatient fingers, straightened her back, and
flung back her head.

"Oh, don't cry--don't cry over me, Jean. We are poor things, we women,
if we can't face the prospect of making our own lives. Put a man into
my place. Would he pine? You know very well he would do nothing of the
kind. A man never wants to marry until he meets the right woman, and
even then he struggles before he succumbs. When he once loves it is
different--he is all fire and impatience, but until that hour arrives he
enjoys his liberty, pities the poor fellows who are handicapped with a
wife and family, and privately determines to keep clear. Here am I--
twenty-three, comfortably off, strong, intelligent, fancy-free. Why
can't I take a leaf out of his book and be content and happy? Why need
I consider myself a martyr because I must live alone, rather than as the
wife of some man unknown, who perhaps in even the ordinary course of
events might have persistently evaded my path, or had the bad taste to
prefer another woman when he _was_ found? It is not as if I were
already in love."

Jean drew her brows together in wistful inquiry. The doubt in her mind
was so transparently expressed that Vanna referred to it as to a spoken
question.

"I know what you are thinking. Edward Verney! You think my regrets
hover round him. It's not true, Jean, it's not true. I had forgotten
his very existence until I saw your face. If I had cared, surely my
thoughts would have flown to him first of all. He is only a
`might-have-been.' I had reached the length of noticing the way his
hair grows on his forehead, and his nice, close ears--that was a
danger-signal, I suppose; and I acknowledge that I have dressed with an
eye to his taste, but it has gone no deeper. I shall be sorry, but it
won't _hurt_ to end our friendship."

"Then why need you--"

"Oh!" Vanna laughed lightly. "I think he admires my--ears also! If we
saw more of each other we should grow nearer; I realise that, therefore
we must separate with all speed. As things are, he won't suffer any
more than I. He is just a dear, simple, unimaginative Englishman, who
needs to have things pushed very conspicuously before his eyes before he
can see them. He knows that I have gone away for a long change after
the strain of Aunt Mary's illness. It will be some months before it
dawns upon him that my holiday is exceeding its