ority good-humouredly, half
aware, within herself, of a reserve of unused power which the others
gave no sign of possessing.

This partly consoled her for missing so much of what made their "good
time"; but the resulting sense of exclusion, of being somehow laughingly
but firmly debarred from a share of their privileges, threw her back on
herself and deepened the reserve which made envious mothers cite her as
a model of ladylike repression. Love, she told herself, would one day
release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the
sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to
relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience.
Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance
with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were
variously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even made
a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social
reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted
to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them
untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to
sit next to them at dinner.

Her own case, of course, would be different. Some day she would find the
magic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Street and life; once or twice she
had even fancied that the clue was in her hand. The first time was
when she had met young Darrow. She recalled even now the stir of the
encounter. But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes the
roof of the forest without reaching its still glades or rippling its
hidden pools. He was extraordinarily intelligent and agreeable, and her
heart beat faster when he was with her. He had a tall fair easy presence
and a mind in which the lights of irony played pleasantly through the
shades of feeling. She liked to hear his voice almost as much as to
listen to what he was saying, and to listen to what he was saying almost
as much as to feel that he was looking at her; but he wanted to kiss
her, and she wanted to talk to him about books and pictures, and have
him insinuate the eternal theme of their love into every subject they
discussed.

Whenever they were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she could
have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if
any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to
try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon a