swer 'yes' to that question."

"Do, if you like."

"I would--only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know
yourself."

"What do you know about me, then, that I don't?"

Gillian's nice brown eyes smiled across at her.

"I know that, somewhere inside you, you've got the capacity for being as
sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living--if
only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish--I wish to
heaven you'd fall in love!"

"I'm not likely to. I'm in love with my art. It gives you a better
return than love for any man."

"No," answered Gillian quietly. "No. You're wrong. Tony died when we'd
only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life
put together. And--I've got Coppertop."

Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.

"Dear Gillyflower!" she said. "I'm so glad you feel like that--bless
you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I
think"--laughing rather forlornly. "I don't trust love. It's the thing
that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman--as my mother was hurt and
tortured and broken." She paused. "No, preserve me from falling in
love!" she added more lightly. "'A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in
the Wilderness' doesn't appeal to me in the least."

"It will one day," retorted Gillian oracularly. "In the meantime you
might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash.
Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate."

"He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking--quite. But
he 'hates my type of woman,' you'll be interested to know. So that you
can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again."

"Not at all," declared Gillian briskly. "There's nothing like beginning
with a little aversion."

Magda smiled reminiscently.

"If you'd been present at our interview, you'd realise that 'a little
aversion' is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late
preserver."

"What was he like, then?"

"At first, because I wouldn't take the sal volatile--you know how I
detest the stuff!--and sit still where he'd put me like a good little
girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely
bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare
in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were
positively provincial in their methods as compared with me."

"Nonsense! If he didn't know