brown woollen, with a wide collar of white lawn turned
back from her splendid throat, she embodied not so much the fugitive
charm of youth, as that burning vitality over which age has no power.
The intellect in her spoke through her noble rather than beautiful
features, through her ardent eyes, through her resolute mouth, through
every perfect gesture with which she accompanied her words. She stood
not only for the elemental forces, but for the free woman; and her
freedom, like that of man, had been built upon the strewn bodies of the
weaker. The law of sacrifice, which is the basic law of life, ruled here
as it ruled in mother-love and in the industrial warfare of men. Her
triumph was less the triumph of the individual than of the type. The
justice not of society, but of nature, was on her side, for she was one
with evolution and with the resistless principle of change. Vaguely,
without knowing that she realized these things, Virginia felt that the
struggle was useless; and with the sense of failure there awoke in her
that instinct of good breeding, that inherited obligation to keep the
surface of life sweet, which was so much older and so much stronger than
the revolt in her soul.

"You were wonderful last night. I wanted to tell you how wonderful I
thought you," she said gently. "You made the play a success--all the
papers say so this morning."

"Well, it was an easy play to make successful," replied the other, while
a fleeting curiosity, as though she were trying to explain something
which she did not quite understand, appeared in her face and made it,
with its redundant vitality, almost coarse for an instant. "It's the
kind the public wants, you couldn't help making it go."

The almost imperceptible conflict which had flashed in their eyes when
they met, had died suddenly down, and the dignity which had been on the
side of the other woman appeared to have passed from her to Virginia.
This dignity, which was not that of triumph, but of a defeat which
surrenders everything except the inviolable sanctities of the spirit,
shielded her like an impenetrable armour against both resentment and
pity. She stood there wrapped in a gentleness more unassailable than any
passion.

"You did a great deal for it and a great deal for my husband," she said,
while her voice lingered unconsciously over the word. "He has told me
often that without your acting he could never have reached the position
he holds."

Then, because it wa