supremely interests you, and thrown upon Craddock Dene
without hope of respite, for the rest of your days. Don't you think you
too might be tempted to try experiments with a power whose strength you
had found to be almost irresistible?"

"Perhaps I should," Algitha admitted.

"I don't say she is doing right, but you must remember that you have
not the temperament that prompts to these outbursts. I suppose that is
only to say that you are better than Hadria, by nature. I think perhaps
you are, but remember you have had the life and the work that you chose
above all others--she has not."

"Heaven knows I don't set myself above Hadria," cried Algitha. "I have
always looked up to her. Don't you know how painful it is when people
you respect do things beneath them?"

"Hadria will disappoint us all in some particular," said Miss Du Prel.
"She will not correspond exactly to anybody's theory or standard, not
even her own. It is a defect which gives her character a quality of the
unexpected, that has for me, infinite attraction."

Miss Du Prel had never shewn so much disposition to support Hadria's
conduct as now, when disapproval was general. She had a strong
fellow-feeling for a woman who desired to use her power, and she was
half disposed to regard her conduct as legitimate. At any rate, it was a
temptation almost beyond one's powers of resistance. If a woman might
not do this, what, in heaven's name, _might_ she do? Was she not
eternally referred to her woman's influence, her woman's kingdom? Surely
a day's somewhat murderous sport was allowable in _that_ realm! After
all, energy, ambition, nervous force, _must_ have an outlet somewhere.
Men could look after themselves. They had no mercy on women when they
lay in their power. Why should a woman be so punctilious?

"Only the man is sure to get the best of it," she added, bitterly. "He
loses so little. It is a game where the odds are all on one side, and
the conclusion foregone."

Unexpectedly, the underwood behind the speakers was brushed aside and
Hadria appeared before them. She looked perturbed.

"What is it? Why are you by yourself?"

"Oh, our party split up, long ago, into cliques, and we all became so
select, that, at last, we reduced each clique to one member. Behold the
very acme of selectness!" Hadria stood before them, in an attitude of
hauteur.

"This sounds like evasion," said Algitha.

"And if it were, what right have you to try to force me to tell w