l distinction. It
put the whole thing before her in a moment. Harry had been the
resistant, and the other with his brilliant initiative attacking, always
attacking when he should have been hiding, had carried him off. "What
had he done, and how had he managed, when Harry must have had such
pressing reasons for wanting to stay?" Ah, she knew only too well Kerr's
exquisite knowledge of managing; but why must he make such a reckless
exposure of himself? Did he suppose Harry was to be managed? Had he no
idea where Harry stood in this affair? In pity's name, didn't he know
that Harry had seen him before--had seen him under circumstances of
which Harry wouldn't talk? They were circumstances of which she knew
nothing, and yet from that very fact there was left a horrible
impression in her mind that they had been of a questionable character.

XV

A LADY IN DISTRESS

She had returned, ready for pitched battle with Clara, and on the
threshold there had met her the very turn in the affair that she had
dreaded all along--the setting of Kerr and Harry upon each other.

These were two whom she had kept apart even in her mind--the man to whom
she was pledged, with whom she had supposed herself in love, and the man
for whom she was flying in the face of all her traditions. She had not
scrutinized the reason of her extraordinary behavior; not since that
dreadful day when the vanishing mystery had taken positive form in him
had she dared to think how she felt about Kerr. She had only acted,
acted; only asked herself what to do next, and never why; only taken his
cause upon herself and made it her own, as if that was her natural
right. She could hardly believe that it was she who had let herself go
to this extent. All her life she had been docile to public opinion,
buxom to conventions, respectful of those legal and moral rules laid
down by some rigid material spirit lurking in mankind. But now when the
moment had come, when the responsibility had descended upon her, she
found that these things had in no way persuaded her. They were not vital
enough for her proposition. They had no meaning now--no more than proper
parlor furniture for a castaway on a desert island.

Then this was herself, a creature too much concerned with the primal
harmonies of life to be impressed by the modulations her decade set upon
them. This was that self which she had obscurely cherished as no more
real than a fairy; but at Kerr's acclamation it had