to extricate them from the influences of
bad women. It was extraordinary how many women who influenced men at all
were bad!) Estelle never had any two opinions about being a good woman
herself. She couldn't be anything else. Good women held all the cards,
but there was no reason why they shouldn't be attractive; it was their
failure to grasp this potentiality, which gave bad women their temporary
sway.

It was really necessary in the missionary career open to young and
attractive married women, to be magnetic. Up to a certain point men must
be led on, because if they didn't care for you in the right way you
couldn't do anything with them at all. After that point, they must be
gently and firmly stopped, or else they might become tiresome, and that
would be bad both for them and for you. Especially with a husband like
Winn, who seemed incapable of grasping fine shades, and far too capable
of dealing roughly and brutally with whatever he did grasp. There had
been a dress, for instance, that he simply refused to let Estelle
wear--remarking that it was a bit too thick--though that was really the
last quality it had possessed.

The question of congenial friendship was therefore likely to be a
difficulty, but Estelle had never forgotten Lionel Drummond. When she
stopped thinking about Winn except as an annoyance, it became necessary
for her to think of somebody else, and her mind fixed itself at once
upon her husband's friend. It seemed to her that in Lionel Drummond she
would find a perfect spiritual counterpart. She dreamed of a friendship
with him too deep for mere friendliness, too late for accepted love; and
it seemed to her exactly the kind of thing she wanted. Hand in hand they
would tread the path of duty together, surrounded by a rosy mist.

They might even lead Winn to higher things; but at this point Estelle's
imagination balked. She could not see Winn being led--he was too
truculent--and he had never in his tenderest moments evinced the
slightest taste for higher things. It would be better perhaps if they
simply set him a good example. He would be certain not to follow it.

She and Lionel would have terrible moments, of course. Estelle thrilled
at the thought of these moments, and from time to time she slightly
stretched the elastic of the path of duty to meet them. They would still
keep on it, of course; they would never go any further than Petrarch and
Laura. These historic philanderers should be their limit,