ting days, had often felt piqued, even
a little surprised, that the heroine of this amazing experience had
not taken advantage of his earnest entreaty that she would give him
the chance of meeting her again. He had left it to her to be
mysterious; as for himself, he had seen no reason why he should
conceal from her either his name or his business address.

Many men, doubtless, would not have been so frank, but Theodore
Carden, too wise in feminine lore to claim an infallible knowledge of
women, never remembered having made a mistake as to the moral social
standing of a new feminine acquaintance. During the few days they had
been together, everything had gone to prove that Pansy was no
masquerader from that under-world whose denizens always filled him
with a sensation of mingled aversion and pity. He could not doubt--he
never had doubted--that what she had chosen to tell him about herself
and her private affairs was substantially true. No man, having heard
her speak of it, could fail to understand her instinctive repulsion
from the old husband to whom she had sold herself into bondage; and as
human, if not perhaps quite as worthy of sympathy, was her restless
longing for freedom to lead the pleasant life led by those of her more
fortunate contemporaries whose doings were weekly chronicled in the
society papers which seemed to form her only reading.

Once only had Carden felt for his entrancing companion the slightest
touch of repugnance. He had taken her to a play in which a child
played an important part, and she had suddenly so spoken as to make
him realise with a shock of surprise that she was the mother of
children! Yet the little remark made by her, "I wonder how my little
girls are getting on," had been very natural and even womanly. Then,
in answer to a muttered word or two on his part, she had explained
that she preferred not to have news of her children when she was
absent from home, since it only worried her; even when staying with
the old cousin at Upper Norwood, she made a point of being completely
free of all possible home troubles. Hearing this gentle, placid
explanation of her lack of maternal anxiety, Carden had put up his
hand to his face to hide a smile; he had not been mistaken; Pansy was
indeed the thorough-going little hedonist he had taken her to be.
Still, it was difficult, even rather disturbing, to think of her as a
mother, and as the mother of daughters.

Yet how deep an impression this unmor