s pleased that Gerald should talk about political
economy with Althea--it was so much better than flirting with Frances
Pickering.

No one, indeed, unless it were Franklin Kane, gave much conjecture to
Gerald's talks with his hostess. Lady Pickering noticed; but she was
vexed, rather than jealous. She couldn't imagine that Gerald felt
anything but a purely intellectual interest in such talks. It was rather
as if a worshipper in some highly ritualistic shrine, filled with
appeals to sight and hearing, had unaccountably wandered off into a
wayside chapel. Lady Pickering felt convinced that this was mere vagrant
curiosity on Gerald's part. She felt convinced that he couldn't care for
chapels. She was so convinced that, moved to emphatic measures, she came
into the open as it were, marched processions and waved banners before
him, in order to remind him what the veritable church was for a person
of taste. Sometimes Gerald joined her, but sometimes he waved a friendly
greeting and went into the chapel again.

So it was that Althea suddenly found herself involved in that mute and
sinister warfare--an unavowed contest with another woman for possession
of a man. How it could be a real contest she did not know; she felt sure
that Lady Pickering did not love Gerald Digby, that she herself loved
him she had not yet told herself, and that he loved neither of them was
obvious. It seemed a mere struggle for supremacy, in which Lady
Pickering's role was active and her own passive. For when she saw that
Lady Pickering looked upon Gerald as a prey between them, that she
seized, threatened and allured, she herself, full of a proud disdain,
drew away, relinquished any hold, any faintest claim she had, handed
Gerald over, as it were, to his pursuer; and as she did this, coldly,
gravely, proudly, she was not aware that no tactics could have been more
effective. For Gerald, when he found himself pursued, and then dropped
by Althea at the feet of the pursuer, became more and more averse to
being seized. And what had been a gracefully amorous dialogue with Lady
Pickering, became a slightly malicious discussion. 'Well, what _do_ you
want of me?' he seemed to demand of her, under all his grace. Lady
Pickering did not want anything except to keep him, and to show Althea
that she kept him. And she was willing to go to great lengths if this
might be effected.

Gerald and Althea, walking one afternoon in the little wood that lay at
the foot of th