with a smile--a generous admission
that she made no pretension to what she was not. Upon Mrs. Durlacher
it was wasted, as was all generosity. She had not the quality herself;
understood it as little as she possessed it.

"Oh, I wasn't supposing that," she replied easily. "I was thinking
that that was the only part of Kew I had noticed. I think I've only
been there once or twice at the most. Have you known my brother long?"

Sally's fingers gripped tight about her little parcel. "Oh no, not
so very long."

"He's a quaint, int'resting sort of person. Don't you find him so?"

To Sally, this description sounded ludicrous. The fashionable way
of putting things was utterly unknown to her. To think of Traill as
quaint, in the sense of the word as she understood it, seemed
preposterous. She could not realize that the Society idea of
quaintness is anything which does not passably imitate or become one
of itself.

"Interesting--yes, I certainly think he is. This room alone would
show that, wouldn't it?"

"Oh, well, I don't know so much about that. He'd have this sort of
room anywhere, wherever he lived. It's the fact that he chooses to
live here and slave and work that I think's uncommon--so quaint. But
he'll give it up--he's bound to give it up after a time. You can't
wash out what's in the blood. Do you think you can? He'll drop the
Bohemian one day--it's merely a phase. I'm only just waiting, you
know, to give the dinner on his coming out." She drew on her long
gloves and smiled in her anticipation of the event.

None of the value of this did Sally lose--none of the intent that
lay behind it. She perfectly realized that it was meant to convey
a candid warning to her; that if she had pretensions, she might as
well light their funeral pyre immediately, burn all her hopes and
ambitions, a sacrifice before the altar of renunciation. But
ambitions, she had none. With her nature, she would willingly have
consented to their burning at such a command as this. What hopes she
possessed, certainly, were shattered; but the flame of her passion,
that was only kindled the more. Now that she realized how utterly
he was beyond her reach, how immeasurably he was above her, she made
silent concessions to the crying demands of her heart which she would
not have dreamed of admitting to herself before.

Irretrievably he was gone now. All Janet had said, strong in truth
as it may have seemed at the time, had only been based upon her
extr