ut think what it is for a
man to love a woman, to divine that that love is returned, and yet to
feel himself as far from her as death is from life. Think what it must
be for him to love that woman so well that he would not haggle over ten
years, no, nor ten hundred years of years, could he pass an hour with
her, and then by way of contrast to find himself suddenly side by side
with her, listening to such music as we heard last night."

"Mr. Arnswald, you are out of your senses," Eden exclaimed. A suspicion
had entered her mind and declined to be dismissed.

"Am I not?" he answered. "Tell me that I am. I need to be told it. Yet
last night, for the first time, it seemed to me that perhaps all might
still be well. It was hope that I found with you, Mrs. Usselex; it was
more than hope, it was life."

And as his eyes rekindled, Eden told herself that his attitude could
have but one signification.

"I'll not play Guinevere to your Lancelot," she murmured. And turning
her back on him she left the room.

VI.

The following day was unstarred by any particular luncheon, or at least
by none at which Eden was expected. Her own repast she consumed in
solitude, and as she rose again from the table, Mrs. Manhattan was
announced.

Mrs. Manhattan was a woman of that class which grows rarer with the
days. She was very clever and knew how to appear absolutely stupid.
According to the circumstances in which she was placed, she could be
frivolous or sagacious, worldly, and sensible. In fact, all things to
all men. Born in Virginia, a Leigh of Leighton, she had married a rich
and popular New Yorker. After marriage, and on removing to Fifth Avenue,
she had the tact to leave her accent and her family tree behind. Her
husband's great-grandfather was lost in the magnificence of myth; her
own figured in Burke. If Nicholas Manhattan had been a snob--which he
was not--that fact would have constituted his sole grievance against
her. But from Laura Leigh, of a North country descent and a feudal
castle in Northumberland, never an allusion could be wrung. In marrying
a New Yorker she espoused all New York, its customs, its prejudices, its
morals, its vices, everything, even to the high pitch of its voice; and
so well did she succeed in identifying herself with it and with its
narrow localisms, that in a few years after her arrival, not to visit
and be visited by Mrs. Nicholas Manhattan was to argue one's self out
into the nethermost li