e
sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had reached
a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when
in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of ambition, and
striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the work
in itself.

On rainy or melancholy days Edna went out and sought the society of
the friends she had made at Grand Isle. Or else she stayed indoors
and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own
comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as
if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled.
Yet there were other days when she listened, was led on and deceived by
fresh promises which her youth held out to her.

She went again to the races, and again. Alcee Arobin and Mrs. Highcamp
called for her one bright afternoon in Arobin's drag. Mrs. Highcamp was
a worldly but unaffected, intelligent, slim, tall blonde woman in the
forties, with an indifferent manner and blue eyes that stared. She had
a daughter who served her as a pretext for cultivating the society of
young men of fashion. Alcee Arobin was one of them. He was a familiar
figure at the race course, the opera, the fashionable clubs. There was
a perpetual smile in his eyes, which seldom failed to awaken a
corresponding cheerfulness in any one who looked into them and listened
to his good-humored voice. His manner was quiet, and at times a little
insolent. He possessed a good figure, a pleasing face, not overburdened
with depth of thought or feeling; and his dress was that of the
conventional man of fashion.

He admired Edna extravagantly, after meeting her at the races with her
father. He had met her before on other occasions, but she had seemed to
him unapproachable until that day. It was at his instigation that Mrs.
Highcamp called to ask her to go with them to the Jockey Club to witness
the turf event of the season.

There were possibly a few track men out there who knew the race horse as
well as Edna, but there was certainly none who knew it better. She sat
between her two companions as one having authority to speak. She laughed
at Arobin's pretensions, and deplored Mrs. Highcamp's ignorance. The
race horse was a friend and intimate associate of her childhood. The
atmosphere of the stables and the breath of the blue grass paddock
revived in her memory and lingered in her nostrils. She did not perceive
that she