originally fragrant flower, or a bird of oddly
attractive plumage. While she said little to him or to anyone else in
his presence, he became aware of the willfulness and joyous lightness
which played on her nature's changeable surface. He wondered at her
influence over Father Beret, whom she controlled apparently without
effort. But in due time he began to feel a deeper character, a broader
intelligence, behind her superficial sauvagerie; and he found that she
really had no mean smattering of books in the lighter vein.

A little thing happened which further opened his eyes and increased the
interest that her beauty and elementary charm of style aroused in him
gradually, apace with their advancing acquaintanceship.

Father Beret had got well and returned to his hut and his round of
spiritual duties; but Beverley came to Roussillon place every day all
the same. For a wonder Madame Roussillon liked him, and at most times
held the scolding side of her tongue when he was present. Jean, too,
made friendly advances whenever opportunity afforded. Of course Alice
gave him just the frank cordiality of hospitable welcome demanded by
frontier conditions. She scarcely knew whether she liked him or not;
but he had a treasury of information from which he was enriching her
with liberal carelessness day by day. The hungriest part of her mind
was being sumptuously banqueted at his expense. Mere intellectual
greediness drew her to him.

Naturally they soon threw off such troubling formalities as at first
rose between them, and began to disclose to each other their true
characteristics. Alice found in Beverley a large target for the
missiles of her clever and tantalizing perversity. He in turn practiced
a native dignity and an acquired superiority of manner to excellent
effect. It was a meeting of Greek with Greek in a new Arcadia. To him
here was Diana, strong, strange, simple, even crude almost to
naturalness, yet admirably pure in spirit and imbued with highest
womanly aspirations. To her Beverley represented the great outside area
of life. He came to her from wonderland, beyond the wide circle of
houseless woods and prairies. He represented gorgeous cities, teeming
parks of fashion, boulevards, salons, halls of social splendor, the
theater, the world of woman's dreams.

Now, there is an antagonism, vague yet powerful, generated between
natures thus cast together from the opposite poles of experience and
education: an antagonism pra