was, she regretted sharply that she
had allowed herself to grow old in this fearfully definite way. It was
too horrible to look like this and to be waiting eagerly, with an almost
deceiving eagerness, for the opening of a door, a footfall, the sound
of a voice that was young. Mrs. Ackroyd, Lady Archie Brook--they looked
surely twenty years younger than she did. She had been a fool! She had
been a passionate, impulsive fool!

No; she was being a fool now.

If only Caroline Briggs were in London! At that moment Lady Sellingworth
longed to be defended against herself. She felt that she was near to the
edge of a precipice, but that perhaps a strong hand could pull her away
from it into the safety she had known for ten years.

"I am sixty. That settles it. There is nothing to be excited about,
nothing to look for, nothing to draw back from or refuse. The fact that
I am sixty and look as I do settles the whole matter."

They were brave words, but unfortunately they altered nothing.
Feeling was untouched by them. Even conviction was not attained. Lady
Sellingworth knew she was sixty, but she felt like a woman of thirty at
that moment. And yet she was not deceived, was not deceiving herself.
She did know--or felt that she absolutely knew--that the curious spell
she had evidently been able, how she scarcely knew, to exert upon Craven
during his visit to her that night could not possibly be lasting. He
must be a quite unusual young man, perhaps even in some degree abnormal.
But even so the fascination he had felt, and had shown that he felt,
could not possibly be a lasting fascination. In such matters she _knew_.

Therefore surely the way was plain before her. Ten years ago she had
made up her mind, as a woman seldom makes up her mind. She had seen
facts, basic facts, naked in a glare of light. Those facts had not
changed. But she had changed. She was ten years older. The horror of
passing into the fifties had died out in the cold resignation of passing
into the sixties. Any folly now would be ten times more foolish than a
folly of ten years ago. She told herself that, reiterated it.

The clock struck six. She heard it and turned from the fire. Certainly
Craven would not call now. It was too late. Only a very intimate friend
would be likely to call after six o'clock, and Craven was not a very
intimate friend, but only a new acquaintance whom she had been with
twice. When he had said good-bye to her after their long talk by