he pleasure in labour
lasts. Creative work--even if well done--loses its savour when it is
finished. Happiness in it ends with the final touch. It is like a dead
thing to him who created it; men's praise or blame makes little
impression; and the aftertaste of both is either bitter or flat and
lasts but a moment."

"Are you a little morbid, Kelly?"

"Am I?"

"It seems to me so."

"And you, Rita?"

She shook her pretty head in silence.

After a while Gladys jumped up into her lap, and she lay back in her
arm-chair smoothing the creature's fur, and gazing absently into space.

"Kelly," she said, "how many, many years ago it seems when you came up
to Delaware County to see us."

"It seems very long ago to me, too."

She lifted her blue eyes:

"May I speak plainly? I have known you a long while. There is only one
man I like better. But there is no woman in the world whom I love as I
love Valerie West.... May I speak plainly?"

"Yes."

"Then--be fair to her, Kelly. Will you?"

"I will try."

"Try very hard. For after all it _is_ a man's world, and she doesn't
understand it. Try to be fair to her, Kelly. For--whether or not the
laws that govern the world are man-made and unjust--they are,
nevertheless, the only laws. Few men can successfully fight them; no
woman can--yet.... I am not angering you, am I?"

"No. Go on."

"I have so little to say--I who feel so deeply--deeply.... And the laws
are always there, Kelly, always there--fair or unfair, just or
unjust--they are always there to govern the world that framed them. And
a woman disobeys them at her peril."

She moved slightly in her chair and sat supporting her head on one
pretty ringless hand.

"Yet," she said, "although a woman disobeys any law at her peril--laws
which a man may often ignore with impunity--there is one law to which no
woman should dare subscribe. And it is sometimes known as 'The Common
Law of Marriage.'"

She sat silent for a while, her gaze never leaving his shadowy face.

"That is the only law--if it is truly a law--that a woman must ignore.
All others it is best for her to observe. And if the laws of marriage
are merely man-made or divine, I do not know. There is a din in the
world to-day which drowns the voices preaching old beliefs.... And a
girl is deafened by the clamour.... And I don't know.

"But, it seems to me, that back of the laws men have made--if there be
nothing divine in their inspiration--there is another fo