her a lead or take a lead
from her over difficult country, and the softer breed of men, whose more
rounded bodies were informed by sharp spirits, who, many of them,
could not have sat a horse over the easiest fence, or perhaps even have
brought down a stag at twenty paces, but who would dominate thousands
from their desks, or from the stages of opera houses, or from adjustable
seats in front of pianos, or from studios hung with embroideries and
strewn with carpets of the East.

These knew how to admire and long for a beautiful woman quite as well
as the men of the moors and the hunting field, and they were often more
subtle in their ways of showing their feelings.

Lady Sellingworth had horses named after her and books dedicated to her.
She moved in all sets which were penetrated by the violent zest for the
life of the big world, and in all sets she more than held her own. She
was as much at home in Chelsea as she was at Newmarket. Her beautifully
disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found
what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford
libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through
which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across
the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as
well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on the moors
of Scotland.

Her husband was no obstacle in her way. She completely dominated him,
even though she gave him no child. He knew she was, as he expressed it,
"worth fifty" of him. Emphatically he was the husband of his wife, and
five years after their marriage he died still adoring her.

She was sorry; she was even very sorry. And she withdrew from the great
world in which she had been a moving spirit now for over ten years for
the period of mourning, a year. But she was not overwhelmed by sorrow.
It is so very difficult for the woman who lives by, and for, her beauty
and her charm for men to be overwhelmed. One man has gone and she mourns
him; but there are so many men left, all of them with eyes in which
lamps may be set and with hearts to be broken.

It was at this time that she became very familiar with Paris.

She wanted to be away from London, so she took an apartment in Paris,
and began to live there very quietly. Friends, of course, came to see
her, and she began to study Paris thoroughly, not the gay, social Paris,
but a very interesting Paris. Presently he