ct, but also with Mrs. Sohlberg. And these two
affairs at one and the same time. For the moment it left Aileen
actually stunned and breathless.

The significance of Rita Sohlberg to her in this hour was greater than
that of any woman before or after. Of all living things, women dread
women most of all, and of all women the clever and beautiful. Rita
Sohlberg had been growing on Aileen as a personage, for she had
obviously been prospering during this past year, and her beauty had
been amazingly enhanced thereby. Once Aileen had encountered Rita in a
light trap on the Avenue, very handsome and very new, and she had
commented on it to Cowperwood, whose reply had been: "Her father must
be making some money. Sohlberg could never earn it for her."

Aileen sympathized with Harold because of his temperament, but she knew
that what Cowperwood said was true.

Another time, at a box-party at the theater, she had noted the rich
elaborateness of Mrs. Sohlberg's dainty frock, the endless pleatings of
pale silk, the startling charm of the needlework and the
ribbons--countless, rosetted, small--that meant hard work on the part
of some one.

"How lovely this is," she had commented.

"Yes," Rita had replied, airily; "I thought, don't you know, my
dressmaker would never get done working on it."

It had cost, all told, two hundred and twenty dollars, and Cowperwood
had gladly paid the bill.

Aileen went home at the time thinking of Rita's taste and of how well
she had harmonized her materials to her personality. She was truly
charming.

Now, however, when it appeared that the same charm that had appealed to
her had appealed to Cowperwood, she conceived an angry, animal
opposition to it all. Rita Sohlberg! Ha! A lot of satisfaction she'd
get knowing as she would soon, that Cowperwood was sharing his
affection for her with Antoinette Nowak--a mere stenographer. And a lot
of satisfaction Antoinette would get--the cheap upstart--when she
learned, as she would, that Cowperwood loved her so lightly that he
would take an apartment for Rita Sohlberg and let a cheap hotel or an
assignation-house do for her.

But in spite of this savage exultation her thoughts kept coming back to
herself, to her own predicament, to torture and destroy her.
Cowperwood, the liar! Cowperwood, the pretender! Cowperwood, the sneak!
At one moment she conceived a kind of horror of the man because of all
his protestations to her; at the next a rage--bitte