wo decades of worldly experience, and instead of thanking
me, you ask what I am talking about." Mrs. Manhattan sank back in her
ample folds and laughed. "Don't you have any tea in this house?"

"You are right, Laura; I am irritating, I am absurd." As she spoke, she
left the lounge. The tragedy-air had departed. She rang the bell, gave
the order for tea, and during the remainder of Mrs. Manhattan's visit,
comported herself so sagaciously that she succeeded in casting dust in
that lady's eyes in a manner which would have thrown that lady's husband
into stupors of admiration.

When her friend at last decided to take herself and her experience away,
Eden remained in the drawing-room. Down the adjacent corner she saw the
sun decline. On the horizon it left an aigrette of gold. Then that
disappeared. Day closed its window, and Night, that queen who reigns
only when she falls, shook out the shroud she wears for gown.

How long Eden sat alone with her thoughts she could not afterwards
recall. For some time she was conscious only of a speck of dust which
Mrs. Manhattan had brought from the outer world and forgotten to remove.
It was such a little speck that at first Eden had pretended not to see
it, but when Mrs. Manhattan had been gone a few minutes it insisted on
her attention. She could not help eying it, and the more closely she
eyed it, the larger it grew. From dust it turned to dirt, from minim
into mountain. And presently it obscured her sight and veiled her mind
with shadows.

Strive as she might, she could not argue it away. She tried to reason
with herself, as a neurosthene, aware of his infirmity, may reason with
the phantasm which he himself has evoked. But this was a phantasm that
no argument could coerce. Did she say, You are unreal, it answered, I am
Doubt. At each effort she made to rout it, it loomed to greater
heights.

In the tremor that beset her she groped in memory for a talisman. She
recalled her husband's wooing of her, his attitude and indulgent
strength. Yet had not Mrs. Manhattan implied that men are double-faced?
She thought of his laborious days, yet had not Mrs. Manhattan defined
business as often synonymous with other men's wives? She recalled his
excuse and was mindful of Mrs. Manhattan's interpretation.

At each new effort the doubt increased, and still she kept arguing with
herself, until suddenly she perceived that she had stopped thinking.
Doubt was pushing her down into an abyss where a