tremendous things
come out of it--and that she considered them with mingled satisfaction
and defiance.

Her attitude, however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the
fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw
into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly
devoid of that quality which is generally called feminine softness.

And she was a forceful woman. She had power. It was in her lean,
high-shouldered, ungraceful figure. It was in her thin, mobile lips and
her high-bridged nose with its thin, clean-cut nostrils. She impressed
herself upon her environment. Standing there at the mantel, her hands
clasped behind her, she was so caught up by the possibilities of the
future that she succeeded in imparting to the grey envelope an almost
animate quality.

She became aware once more of voices in the next room: a man's light
baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh.
Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with unusual
deliberation that she opened the communicating door.

Her voice was free of excitement when, ignoring her daughter's caller,
she said:

"Mildred, just a moment, please."

Mildred came in and closed the door. Her mother, now near the window
across the room, looked first at her and then at the grey envelope.

"I thought," Mrs. Brace said, "you'd forgotten you were going to mail
it."

"Why didn't you mail it yourself?" The tone of that was cool insolence.

Mother and daughter were strikingly alike--hair piled high in a wide
wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming
brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the
daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the
mother's. One would have appraised the older woman
vindictive--malevolent, possibly.

But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost concealed,
this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips had a softness
of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated emotional depths
utterly foreign to her mother.

They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already
reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense consideration.

"I didn't mail it," Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query, "because I
knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to do."

There was frank emphasis on the "said."

"Your feet don't always follow you