thing
that I can have--the only permanent fact that is left."

Hilda had a rebound of immense discomfort. "Who said anything about
giving up?" she interrupted.

"Why, you did! But I'm quite willing to believe you didn't mean it, if
you say so." She turned the appeal of her face and saw a sudden pitiful
consideration in Hilda's, and, as if it called them forth, two tears
sprang to her eyes and fell, as she lowered her delicate head, upon her
lap.

"Dear thing! I didn't indeed. If I meant anything it was that I'm
overstrung. I've been horribly harried lately." She possessed herself of
one of Alicia's hands and stroked it. Alicia kept her head bent for a
moment and then let it fall, in sudden abandonment, upon the other
woman's shoulder. Her defences crumbled so utterly that Hilda felt
guilty of using absurdly heavy artillery. They sat together for a moment
or two in silence with only that supervening sense of successful
aggression between them, and the humiliation was Hilda's. Presently it
grew heavy, embarrassing. Alicia got up and began a slow, restless
pacing up and down before the alcove they sat in. Hilda watched her--it
was a rhythmic progress--and when she came near with a sound of brushing
silk and a faint fragrance which seemed a personal emanation, drew a
long breath, as if she were an essence to be inhaled, and so, in a
manner, obtained, assimilated.

"Oh, yes," Miss Livingstone said, rehabilitating herself with a smile,
"I must keep you. I'll do anything you like to make myself more--worth
while. I'll read for the pure idea. I think I'll take up modelling.
There's rather a good man here just now."

"Yes," Hilda assented. "Read for the pure idea--take up modelling. It is
most expedient, especially if you marry. Women who like those things
sometimes have geniuses for sons. But for me, so far as I count--oh, my
dear, do nothing more. You are already an achieved effect--a
consummation of the exquisite in every way. Generations have been chosen
among for you; your person holds the inheritance of all that is gracious
and tender and discriminating in a hundred years. You are as rare as I
am, and if there is anything you would take from me, I would make more
than one exchange for the mere niceness of your fibre--the feeling you
have for fine shades of morality and taste--all that makes you a lady,
my dear."

"Such niminy piminy things," said Alicia, contradicting the light of
satisfaction in her eyes. The sou