hile the words were still in the air,
and turning quickly they saw Laura pausing upon the threshold.

"And pray what is it about Laura?" she asked in her cordial contralto
voice. "A person who has borne living in the house with a flute may be
said to have unlimited powers of endurance."

She moved forward and Kemper, while he sprang to his feet and stood
waiting for the introduction, became swiftly aware that with her
entrance the whole atmosphere had taken a fresher and a finer quality.
The sophistication of the world, the flippant irony of Gerty's voice
gave place immediately before her earnest dignity and before the look of
large humanity which distinguished her so vitally from the women whom he
knew. He felt her sincerity of purpose at the same instant that he felt
Gerty's shallowness and the artificial glamour of the hot-house air in
which he had hardly drawn breath. There was an appeal in Laura's face
which he had never seen before--an expression which seemed to him to
draw directly from the elemental pulse; and he felt suddenly that there
were depths of consciousness which he had never sounded, vivid
experiences which he had never even glimpsed. "She is different--but how
is she different?" he asked himself, perplexed. "Is she simply a bigger
personality, or is she really more of a woman than any woman I have ever
known? What is it in her that speaks to me and what is it in myself that
responds?" And it seemed to him both strange and wonderful that he
should be drawn by an impulse which was not the impulse of love--that a
woman should attract him through qualities which were independent of the
allurement of sex. A clean and perfectly sane satisfaction was the
immediate result; he felt that he had grown larger in his own eyes--that
the old Adam who had ruled over him so long had become suddenly dwarfed
and insignificant. "To like a woman and yet not to make love to her," he
repeated in his thoughts. "By Jove, it will be something decent,
something really worth while." Then he remembered that he had never
known intimately a woman of commanding intellect, and the novelty
inspired him with the spirit of fresh adventure.

She had bowed to him over the large muff she carried, and he spoke
lightly though his awakened interest showed in his face and voice. "I
was the unfortunate subject of Gerty's decision," he said. "Is there no
appeal from it?"

Her answering smile was one of indifferent kindliness; and he liked,
e