!" said Helena, her cheek glowing. "It
is just the opposite of dulness--and routine--and make-believe. It's what
makes life worth while. And it is the young who feel it--the young who
hear it calling--the young who obey it! And then when they are old, they
have it to remember. Now, do you understand?"

Lucy Friend did not answer. But involuntarily, two shining tears stood in
her eyes. There was something extraordinarily moving in the girl's
ardour. She could hardly bear it. There came back to her momentary
visions from her own quiet past--a country lane at evening where a man
had put his arm round her and kissed her--her wedding-evening by the sea,
when the sun went down, and all the ways were darkened, and the stars
came out--and that telegram which put an end to everything, which she had
scarcely had time to feel, because her mother was so ill, and wanted her
every moment. Had she--even she--in her poor, drab, little life--had her
moments of living Poetry, of transforming Colour, like others--without
knowing it?

Helena watched her, as though in a quick, unspoken sympathy, her own
storm of feeling subsiding.

"Do you know, Lucy, you look very nice indeed in that little black
dress!" she said, in her soft, low voice, like the voice of an
incantation, that she had used the night before. "You are the neatest,
daintiest person!--not prim--but you make everything you wear refined.
When I compare you with Cynthia Welwyn!"

She raised her shoulders scornfully. Lucy Friend, aghast at the
outrageousness of the comparison, tried to silence her--but quite in
vain. Helena ran on.

"Did you watch Cynthia last night? She was playing for Cousin Philip with
all her might. Why doesn't he marry her? She would suit his autocratic
ideas very well. He is forty-four. She must be thirty-eight if she is a
day. They have both got money--which Cynthia can't do without, for she is
horribly extravagant. But I wouldn't give much for her chances. Cousin
Philip is a tough proposition, as the American says. There is no getting
at his real mind. All one knows is that it is a tyrannical mind!"

All softness had died from the girl's face and sparkling eyes. She sat on
the floor, her hands round her knees, defiance in every tense feature.
Mrs. Friend was conscious of renewed alarm and astonishment, and at last
found the nerve to express them.

"How can you call it tyrannical when he spends all this time and thought
upon you!"

"The gilding of