he very life in which she moved. And here he sat,
this Jadwin, quiet, in evening dress, listening good-naturedly to this
beautiful music, for which he did not care, to this rant and fustian,
watching quietly all this posing and attitudinising. How small and
petty it must all seem to him!

Laura found time to be astonished. What! She had first met this man
haughtily, in all the panoply of her "grand manner," and had promised
herself that she would humble him, and pay him for that first
mistrustful stare at her. And now, behold, she was studying him, and
finding the study interesting. Out of harmony though she knew him to be
with those fine emotions of hers of the early part of the evening, she
nevertheless found much in him to admire. It was always just like that.
She told herself that she was forever doing the unexpected thing, the
inconsistent thing. Women were queer creatures, mysterious even to
themselves.

"I am so pleased that you are enjoying it all," said Corthell's voice
at her shoulder. "I knew you would. There is nothing like music such as
this to appeal to the emotions, the heart--and with your temperament."

Straightway he made her feel her sex. Now she was just a woman again,
with all a woman's limitations, and her relations with Corthell could
never be--so she realised--any other than sex-relations. With Jadwin
somehow it had been different. She had felt his manhood more than her
womanhood, her sex side. And between them it was more a give-and-take
affair, more equality, more companionship. Corthell spoke only of her
heart and to her heart. But Jadwin made her feel--or rather she made
herself feel when he talked to her--that she had a head as well as a
heart.

And the last act of the opera did not wholly absorb her attention. The
artists came and went, the orchestra wailed and boomed, the audience
applauded, and in the end the tenor, fired by a sudden sense of duty
and of stern obligation, tore himself from the arms of the soprano, and
calling out upon remorseless fate and upon heaven, and declaiming about
the vanity of glory, and his heart that broke yet disdained tears,
allowed himself to be dragged off the scene by his friend the basso.
For the fifth time during the piece the soprano fainted into the arms
of her long-suffering confidante. The audience, suddenly remembering
hats and wraps, bestirred itself, and many parties were already upon
their feet and filing out at the time the curtain fell.