e, Clavey."

As he resumed his restless march, Gora sent her mind travelling out of
the mountains and far to the south, and tried to penetrate the brain of
Mary Zattiany. She could not visualize her in the bed of a casual
hotel or sitting in the chair of a parlor car, so she skipped the
interval and saw her next day in that intimate room of hers upstairs;
the room, assuredly, where she would think out her problem.

Gora had studied Madame Zattiany with all the avidity of the artist for
a rare human theme, and she believed that she knew her as well as
Clavering did, if not better. She had also not failed to observe
Prince Hohenhauer's picture, and had read the accompanying text with
considerable interest, an interest augmented, not unnaturally, by his
exceeding good looks. That same day she had met a Viennese at dinner
who had talked of him with enthusiasm and stated definitely that he was
the one hope of Austria.

Gora Dwight was a very ambitious woman and revelled in the authority
that fame and success had brought her. She was also as disillusioned
in regard to men as any unmarried woman could be; although quite aware
that if she had lacked a gift to entice her emotions to her brain, she
no doubt would even now be looking about for some man to fall in love
with. But her pride was spared a succession of humiliating
anti-climaxes, and she had learned, younger than most women, or even
men, that power, after sex has ceased from troubling, is the dominant
passion in human nature.

And Madame Zattiany was twenty years older than herself, and had
drained the jewelled chalice to the dregs. And for many years more she
had enjoyed power, revelled in it, looked forward, Gora made no doubt,
to a greater and greater exercise of it. Power had become the master
passion of her life.

Like men in the same case, she had indulged herself, during a period of
enforced inaction, with an exciting love adventure. That she had
fallen in love, romantically in love, with this young man, whom so many
women loved, and who, no doubt, had given her the full benefit of all
his pent-up ardors--Gora could imagine those love scenes--she had not
questioned, in spite of Madame Zattiany's carefully composed tones when
speaking of him, and her avoidance of so much as the exchange of a
meaning glance with him in public. Up here "Mary" had ceased to be a
woman of the world, she had looked like a girl of twenty: and that she
was in love and reck