Irene attended the door, as was her custom. Her eyes took in Edith's
face and figure with mild surprise; Edith was conscious of the process
of a quick intellect endeavouring to classify her;--solicitor, music
teacher, business girl? And in that moment of pause she saw Irene's
eyes, and a strange commotion of feeling surged through her. There was
something in those eyes that suggested to Edith a new side to Dave's
nature; it was as though the blind had suddenly been drawn from strange
chambers of his soul. So this was the woman Dave had chosen to love.
No; one does not choose whom one will love; one loves without choosing.
Edith was conscious of that; she knew that in her own life. And even
as she looked this first time upon Irene she became aware of a subtle
attraction gathering about her; she felt something of that power which
had held Dave to a single course through all these years. And suddenly
a great new truth was born in Edith Duncan. Suddenly she realized that
if the steel at any time prove unfaithful to the magnet the fault lies
not in the steel, but in the magnet. What a change of view, what a
reversion of all accepted things, came with the realization of that
truth which roots down into the bedrock of all nature! . . .

"Won't you come in?" Irene was saying. Her voice was sweet and
musical, but there was a note of sadness in it which set responsive
chords atremble all through Edith's heart. Must she love this woman?
Must she, in spite of herself, love this, of all women?

"I am Edith Duncan," she managed to say. "I--I think I have something
to say that may interest you."

There was a quick leap in Irene's eyes; the leap of that intuitive
feminine sense of danger which so seldom errs in dealing with its own
sex, and is yet so unreliable a defence from the dangers of the other.
Mrs. Hardy was in the living-room. "Won't you come up to my work
shop?" Irene answered without change of voice, and they ascended the
stairs together.

"I draw a little," Irene was saying, talking fast. "Oh yes, I have
quite commercialized my art, such as it is. I draw pictures of shoes,
and shirt waists, and other women's wear which really belong to the
field of a feminine artist. But I haven't lost my soul altogether. I
daub in colour a little--yes, daub, that's the word. But it keeps
one's soul alive. You will hardly recognize that," she said,
indicating an easel, "but here is the original." She ran up the blin