the eager three some fresh startling effect the others could not
understand. They were restless; Clara notably, even under her calm.

Flora knew she was not giving up the quest of Farrell Wand, but only
setting it aside with her unfailing thrift, which saved everything. But
why, in this case? And Harry, who had been so merry with the mystery at
dinner--why had he suddenly tried to suppress her, to want to ignore the
whole business; why had he hesitated over his question, and finally let
it fall? And why, above all, was Kerr so brilliantly talking at Ella, in
the same way he had begun at Flora herself? Talking at Ella as if he
hardly saw her, but like some magician flinging out a brilliant train of
pyrotechnics to hypnotize the senses, before he proceeds with his trick.
And the way Ella was looking at him--her bewildered alacrity, the way
she was struggling with what was being so rapidly shot at her--appeared
to Flora the prototype of her own struggle to understand what reality
these appearances around her could possibly shadow. Never before had her
sense of standing on the outside edge of life been so strong. It seemed
as though there were some large, impalpable thing growing in the midst
of them, around the edges of which they were tiptoeing, daringly,
fearfully, each one for himself. But though it loomed so large that she
felt herself in the very shadow of it, rub her eyes as she would, she
couldn't see it.

Often enough in the crowds she moved among she had felt herself lonely
and not wondered at it. But now and here, sitting among her close,
intimate circle, her friends and her lover, it seemed like a horrible
obsession--yet it was true. As clear as if it had been shown her in a
revelation she saw herself absolutely alone.

III

ENCOUNTERS ON PARADE

Flora, before the mirror, gaily stabbing in her long hat-pins, confessed
to herself that last night had been queer, as queer as queer could be;
but this morning, luckily, was real again. Her fancy last night
had--yes, she was afraid it really had--run away with her. And she
turned and held the hand-mirror high, to be sure of the line of her
tilted hat, gave a touch to the turn of her wide, close belt, a flirt to
the frills of her bodice.

The wind was lightly ruffling and puffing out the muslin curtains of the
windows, and from the garden below came the long, silvery clash of
eucalyptus leaves. She leaned on the high window-ledge to look downward
over re