r their lack of passion, were full of a
half-mocking, half-tender vivacity. Sara, a beautiful young woman
herself, surveyed this unconscious rival and recognised, with good
sense, a fatal attractiveness which was stronger than time and far above
beauty. It was the spell of a spirit and body planned for fascination
and excelling in this indefinable power. Had she been born to ruin men?
thought Sara. Had she been given a glamour and certain gifts merely to
perplex, deceive, and destroy all those who came within the magic of her
glance? History had its long, terrible catalogue of such women whose
words are now forgotten, whose portraits leave us cold, yet whose very
names still agitate the heart and fire the imagination. Was Brigit one
of these?

She had nothing of the deliberate coquette who, eager to please, keeps
up an incessant battery of airs and graces. Her enchantments depended
rather on the fact that she neither asked for admiration nor valued it.
Free from vanity, and therefore indifferent to criticism, the
bitternesses which destroy the peace of most women never entered her
mind. The man she had chosen gave her no cause for jealousy, and, while
she enjoyed men's society, she had been so accustomed to it from her
earliest days that she had nothing to fear from the novelty of their
friendship, or the danger of their compliments. Not prudish, not morbid,
not envious, not sentimental, and not indolent, she was perhaps
especially endowed for the tantalising career which the stage offers to
the ambitious of both sexes. Acting came to her as music comes to the
true musician. She never considered whether she would become a great
actress or a rejected one: the art in itself was her delight, and she
found more happiness in reciting Moliere and Shakespeare alone in her
own room than she ever received, even at the height of her fame, from
her triumphs before the world. There was, no doubt, a great craving in
her nature for innocent pleasures and excitement. She loved gay scenes,
bright lights, beautiful clothes, lively music, witty conversation. She
had been born for the brilliant Courts of the eighteenth century when
life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible
now--when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller
play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the
kingdom of the Graces.

The three women as they faced each other presented a remarkable picture.
Pensee, th