declared, who had never lied to her. The world had lied to
her, Kemper had lied to her, Perry had lied to her more than all; and
she had come at last to feel, almost without explaining it to herself,
that the truth was in Laura as in some obscure, mystic sense the
sacrament was in the bread and wine upon the altar. Though she herself
was quite content to slip away from her ideals, she felt that to believe
in somebody was as necessary to her life as the bread she ate. It made
no difference that she should number among the profane multitude who
found their way back to the fleshpots, but her heart demanded that her
friend should remain constant to the prophetic vision and the promised
land. Laura was not only the woman whom she loved, she had become to her
at last almost a vicarious worship. What she couldn't believe Laura
believed in her stead; where she was powerless even to be good, Laura
became not only good but noble. And through all her friendship, from
that first day at school to the present moment, she remembered now that
no hint of jealousy had ever looked at her from Laura's eyes. "A thrush
could hardly borrow the plumage of a paroquet," Trent had said; and the
brilliant loveliness which had disturbed the peace of other women she
had known, had produced in Laura only an increasing delight, a more
fervent rapture. As she looked on the delicate, poetic face of the
woman before her, she found herself asking, almost in terror, if it were
possible that her friend was not only reconciled but positively
enamoured of the world? Had Laura, also, entered into a rivalry which
would be as relentless and more futile than her own? Would she, too,
waste her life in an effort to give substance to a shadow and to render
permanent the most impermanent of earthly things? But the question came
and went so abruptly that the minute afterward she had entirely
forgotten the passage of it through her mind.

"What a bore of a summer I shall have," she observed lightly, with one
of those swift changes of subject so characteristic of her restless
temperament. "The doctor has ordered me back to camp in the Adirondacks,
and unless Arnold and yourself take pity on me heaven knows whether I'll
be any better than a fungus by the autumn."

She was arranging her veil before the mirror as she spoke, and she
paused now to survey with a dissatisfied frown one of the large black
spots which had settled across her nose. "I told Camille I couldn't
sta