ess, of others, with the added
illumination of the subjective standpoint. This illumination shed its
fiery light, growing from glimmer to flame through the masterless
nights, upon the things Warren had said and done, the things they had
done together, the things he would not have suggested, not contemplated
even in thought, if he had regarded her as one of his own 'sort of
people,' sharing his conventions. Who should blame him? He had been
adequately justified; she had shown herself from the very outset--he had
no doubt waited to be sure of it, so as not to risk insult--of a sort of
people immeasurably different: so different that she had not even
grasped the difference, had only not been surprised at hints of it
because they had passed her so serenely by. They had passed clear over
her head; dragged back through space by retrospect, they struck her full
in the face.

She saw, in the blinding light of an illuminative moment, Warren's
attitude towards a girl placed by him among his own 'sort of people';
she saw him brushing aside, lest they should touch and smirch her, the
Ginas, the Morellos, the Lulis, who might have crossed her path; she saw
his considerate respect, his equal comradeship.

She had given him no chance of respecting her, had he tried to do so.
The things crowded back.... On the evening after the first lunch-party
he had met her in the street alone at midnight. He had walked home with
her; she read into his manner now a touch of the protective regard that
she imagined in him towards his own sort. But it had been tinged with
uncertainty; even then he had probably known her. Not to risk misjudging
her, however, he had walked with her to her home, assuming, doubtfully,
that she had lost her escort.

It had not taken many days to confirm the doubt, to obviate all
necessity for such assumption.

And then--how they had played together! Each had been so contented with
the other; they had had such fun. Retrospect with the search-light could
not quite spoil that--not all of it. But it did its best; it dragged it
through the mud till it was hidden, inches deep.

Prudence Varley would have seen a flimsy screen toppling over with a
crash, revealing the lurker behind with his contemptuous smile. So Betty
too very bitterly saw him: but she was aware also that the smile was not
all contempt. Only the contempt, real or imagined, poisoned the rest.

The search-light flashed over the large, tolerant acceptance, so