er so loudly now,
let the suction of the Pit be never so strong, Eve triumphed. Venus
toute entiere s'attachait a sa proie.

These women of America, these others who allowed business to draw their
husbands from them more and more, who submitted to those cruel
conditions that forced them to be content with the wreckage left after
the storm and stress of the day's work--the jaded mind, the exhausted
body, the faculties dulled by overwork--she was sorry for them. They,
less radiant than herself, less potent to charm, could not call their
husbands back. But she, Laura, was beautiful; she knew it; she gloried
in her beauty. It was her strength. She felt the same pride in it as
the warrior in a finely tempered weapon.

And to-night her beauty was brighter than ever. It was a veritable
aureole that crowned her. She knew herself to be invincible. So only
that he saw her thus, she knew that she would conquer. And he would
come. "If he loved her," she had said. By his love for her he had
promised; by his love she knew she would prevail.

And then at last, somewhere out of the twilight, somewhere out of those
lowest, unplumbed depths of her own heart, came the first tremor of
doubt, come the tardy vibration of the silver cord which Page had
struck so sharply. Was it--after all--Love, that she cherished and
strove for--love, or self-love? Ever since Page had spoken she seemed
to have fought against the intrusion of this idea. But, little by
little, it rose to the surface. At last, for an instant, it seemed to
confront her.

Was this, after all, the right way to win her husband back to her--this
display of her beauty, this parade of dress, this exploitation of self?

Self, self. Had she been selfish from the very first? What real
interest had she taken in her husband's work? "Right or wrong, good or
bad, I would put my two hands into the fire to help him." Was this the
way? Was not this the only way? Win him back to her? What if there were
more need for her to win back to him? Oh, once she had been able to say
that love, the supreme triumph of a woman's life, was less a victory
than a capitulation. Had she ordered her life upon that ideal? Did she
even believe in the ideal at this day? Whither had this cruel cult of
self led her?

Dimly Laura Jadwin began to see and to understand a whole new
conception of her little world. The birth of a new being within her was
not for that night. It was conception only--the sensation of a n