at words. Mathilde, accustomed all her life to receive
information from her mother, received this; and for the first time felt
the egotism of her beauty awake, a sense of her own importance the more
vivid because she had always been humble-minded. She did not look at her
mother; she sat up very straight and stared as if at new fields before
her, while a faint smile flickered at the corners of her mouth--a smile
of an awakening sense of power.

"What you have," Adelaide went on, "ought to bring great happiness,
great position, great love; and how can I let you throw yourself away
at eighteen on a commonplace boy with a glib tongue and a high opinion
of himself? Don't tell me that it will make you happy. That would be
the worst of all, if you turned out to be so limited that you were
satisfied,--that would be a living death. O my darling, I give you my
word that if you will give up this idea, ten years from now, when you
see this boy, still glib, still vain, and perhaps a little fat, you
will actually shudder when you think how near he came to cutting you
off from the wonderful, full life that you were entitled to." And then,
as if she could not hope to better this, Adelaide sprang up, and left
the girl alone.

Mathilde rose, too, and looked at herself in the glass. She was stirred,
she was changed, she was awakened, but awakened to something her mother
had not counted on. Almost too gentle, too humble, too reasonable, as she
had always been, the drop of egotism which her mother had succeeded in
instilling into her nature served to solidify her will, to inspire her
with a needed power of aggression.

She nodded once at her image in the mirror.

"Well," she said, "it's my life, and I'm willing to take the
consequences."

CHAPTER XIII

When Mathilde emerged from the subway into the sunlight of City Hall
Park, Pete was nowhere to be seen. She had spent several minutes
wandering in the subterranean labyrinth which threatened to bring her to
Brooklyn Bridge and nowhere else, so she was a little late for her
appointment; and yet Pete was not there. He had promised to be waiting
for her. This was a more important occasion than the meeting in the
museum and more terrifying, too.

Their plans were simple. They were going to get their marriage license,
they were going to be married immediately, they were then going to inform
their respective families, and start two days later for San Francisco.

Mathilde stared fu