and Horace, and with the
husband, if there happened to be one. He sometimes reminded them, when
they fell to wrangling, that they must not, after all, overturn the boat
under them, and that it would be better to stop just before they drove
her wild than just after. As he was the only one among them who
understood the sources of her fortune,--and they knew it,--he was able,
when it came to a general set-to, to proclaim sanctuary for the goose
that laid the golden eggs.

That Poppas had caused the break between Cressida and McChord was another
stick her sisters held over her. They pretended to understand perfectly,
and were always explaining what they termed her "separation"; but they
let Cressida know that it cast a shadow over her family and took a good
deal of living down.

A beautiful soundness of body, a seemingly exhaustless vitality, and a
certain "squareness" of character as well as of mind, gave Cressida
Garnet earning powers that were exceptional even in her lavishly rewarded
profession. Managers chose her over the heads of singers much more
gifted, because she was so sane, so conscientious, and above all, because
she was so sure. Her efficiency was like a beacon to lightly anchored
men, and in the intervals between her marriages she had as many suitors
as Penelope. Whatever else they saw in her at first, her competency so
impressed and delighted them that they gradually lost sight of everything
else. Her sterling character was the subject of her story. Once, as she
said, she very nearly escaped her destiny. With Blasius Bouchalka she
became almost another woman, but not quite. Her "principles," or his lack
of them, drove those two apart in the end. It was of Bouchalka that we
talked upon that last voyage I ever made with Cressida Garnet, and not of
Jerome Brown. She remembered the Bohemian kindly, and since it was the
passage in her life to which she most often reverted, it is the one I
shall relate here.

III

Late one afternoon in the winter of 189-, Cressida and I were walking in
Central Park after the first heavy storm of the year. The snow had been
falling thickly all the night before, and all day, until about four
o'clock. Then the air grew much warmer and the sky cleared. Overhead it
was a soft, rainy blue, and to the west a smoky gold. All around the
horizon everything became misty and silvery; even the big, brutal
buildings looked like pale violet water-colours on a silver ground. Under
the elm