ad gathered round her so many acquaintances. It was almost as
if his father in addition to bequeathing her money enough to be
independent of the world had bequeathed also enough women friends to
make her forget that she had ever stood in any other relation to
society.

"Where does mother get hold of all these women?" Michael asked Stella
irritably, when he had been trapped into a rustling drawing-room for the
whole of a hot summer afternoon.

"Oh, they're all interested in something or other," Stella explained.
"And mother's interested in them. I expect, you know, she had rather a
rotten time really when she was traveling round."

"But she used always to be so vague and amusing," said Michael, "and now
she's as fussy and practical as a vicar's wife."

"I think I know why that is," Stella theorized meditatively. "I think if
I ever gave up everything for one man I should get to rely on him so
utterly that when he wasn't with me any sort of contact with other
people would make me vague."

"Yes, but then she would be more vague than ever now," Michael argued.

"No; the reaction against dependence on one person would be bound to
make her change tremendously, if, as I think, a good deal of the
vagueness came after she ran away with father."

Michael looked rather offended by Stella's blunt reference.

"I rather wish you wouldn't talk quite so easily about all of that," he
said. "I think the best thing for you to do is to forget it."

"Like mother, in fact," Stella pointed out. "Do you know, Michael, I
believe by this time she is entirely oblivious of the fact that in her
past there has been anything which was not perfectly ordinary, almost
dull. Really by the way she worries me about the simplest little things,
you'd think--however, as I know you have rather a dread of perfect
frankness in your only sister, I'll shut up and say no more."

"What things?" asked Michael sharply. Stella's theories about the
freedom of the artist had already worried him a good deal, and though he
had laughed them aside as the extravagant affectations of a gifted
child, now that, however grudgingly he must admit the fact, she was
really grown up, it would never do for her without a protest from him to
turn theories into practice.

"Oh, Michael!" Stella laughed reprovingly. "Don't put on that
professorial or priestly air or whatever you call it, because if you
ever want confidences from me you'll have just to be humbly
sympathetic."