feet on another,
and lighted a cigarette.

"No, Buddha," she said, as if to a confessor, "don't
think it of me. It was a lie, a pose to tempt him on. I
would never have given it up--never! It is more to me
--I am _almost_ sure--than he is. It is part of my soul,
Buddha, and my love for him--oh, I cannot tell!"

She threw the cigarette away from her and stared at the
smiling image with heavy eyes in silence. Then she went
on:

"But I always tell you everything, little bronze god,
and I won't keep back even this. There was a moment when
I would have let him take me in his arms and hold me
close, close to him. And I wish he had--I should have
had it to remember. Bah! why is my face hot! I might as
well be ashamed of wanting my dinner!"

Again she dropped into silence, and when next she spoke
her whole face had hardened.

"But no! He thinks that he has read me finally, that he
has done with me, that I no longer count! He will marry
some red-and-white cow of an Englishwoman who will accept
herself in the light of a reproductive agent and do her
duty by him accordingly. As I would not--no! Good heavens,
no! So perhaps it is as well, for I will go on loving
him, of course, and some day he will come back to me, in
his shackles, and together, whatever we do, we will make
no vulgar mess of it. In the meantime, Buddha, I will
smile, like you.

"And there is always this, which is the best of me. You
agree, don't you, that it is the best of me?" She fingered
the manuscript in her lap. "All my power, all my joy,
the quintessence of my life! I think I shall be angry if
it has a common success, if the people like it too well.
I only want recognition for it--recognition and
acknowledgment and admission. I want George Meredith to
ask to be introduced to me!" She made rather a pitiful
effort to smile. "And that, Buddha, is what will happen."

Mechanically she lighted another cigarette and turned
over her first rough pages--a copy had gone to
Rattray--looking for passages she had wrought most to
her satisfaction. They left her cold as she read them,
but she was not unaware that the reason of this lay
elsewhere; and when she went to bed she put the packet
under her pillow and slept a little better for the comfort
of it.

CHAPTER XXXII.

In the week that followed Janet Cardiff's visit to
Elfrida's attic, these two young women went through a
curious reapproachment. At every step it was tentative,
but at every step