f will that
decides to accomplish an object without bothering in the least about
ways and means. She had, as it were, the religion of the Will. She would
be inspired, she felt sure, in just the right way at just the right
moment. She had the faith that not only counts on removing mountains
into the sea, but depends on the sea's extinguishing them if they chance
to be volcanoes and their peaks left unsubmerged.

She thought of her own passionate love for Morris as a sea into which
many mountains might be cast and overwhelmed. There would come the
destined moment--the tidal wave would rush gloriously inland. All would
be swept clear--a bare, clean space whereon she would build their palace
of delights.

Belinda was one of the women-children who are born knowing things. She
came of Lilith rather than of Eve. She had no low curiosities, because
from the beginning she seemed to have been aware of everything. A wise
Brahman looking on her would have seen the latest incarnation of some
fearless Courtesan, destined in this particular existence to aspire to
the domestication of her lawlessness. For some past deed of mercy on her
part, the Lords of Karma had decreed that in this life respectability
should be the modest guiding-star of her wayward feet. For though
Belinda would always be in spirit her lover's mistress, she had no
faintest idea of being other than his wife in the eyes of the world.

So she looked at Sophy, and wondered how much she really loved Morry.
She was sorry for her, in a way, but this emotion of indulgent
compassion did not render her a whit less implacable.

And Sophy, observing her closely, tried to analyse the strange effect
that the girl had upon her. She felt a powerful force emanating from
the whole scintillant young figure--yet she felt as strongly that, for
her at least, Belinda had not "charm."

But then Belinda did not have charm for other women. She was
essentially, from her cradle, the type of "man's woman" in one of its
completest forms. Not the Griselda type, but the type that led Antony to
set sail after the fleet of Egypt.

Loring had been right when he called Belinda a "kitten Cleopatra."

She was one of nature's perfectly amoral and shameless triumphs--_la
femme courtisane_ flung out as rounded and complete as a golden bubble
on the wind of destiny.

The three women sat down together, and Sophy poured tea. Loring was out
motoring, but Sophy said that she expected him any minute. H