ppeared to harbour no resentment against the undefined
power which dispensed the gift in such unequal measure. Things came
one's way or they didn't; and meanwhile one could only look on, and make
the most of small compensations, such as watching "the show" at Mrs.
Murrett's, and talking over the Lady Ulricas and other footlight
figures. And at any moment, of course, a turn of the kaleidoscope might
suddenly toss a bright spangle into the grey pattern of one's days.

This light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a young man
accustomed to more traditional views. George Darrow had had a fairly
varied experience of feminine types, but the women he had frequented had
either been pronouncedly "ladies" or they had not. Grateful to both for
ministering to the more complex masculine nature, and disposed to
assume that they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, he
had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind, avoiding that
intermediate society which attempts to conciliate both theories of life.
"Bohemianism" seemed to him a cheaper convention than the other two, and
he liked, above all, people who went as far as they could in their own
line--liked his "ladies" and their rivals to be equally unashamed of
showing for exactly what they were. He had not indeed--the fact of Lady
Ulrica was there to remind him--been without his experience of a third
type; but that experience had left him with a contemptuous distaste for
the woman who uses the privileges of one class to shelter the customs of
another.

As to young girls, he had never thought much about them since his early
love for the girl who had become Mrs. Leath. That episode seemed, as
he looked back on it, to bear no more relation to reality than a pale
decorative design to the confused richness of a summer landscape. He
no longer understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own
young heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances of hers. He
had known a moment of anguish at losing her--the mad plunge of youthful
instincts against the barrier of fate; but the first wave of stronger
sensation had swept away all but the outline of their story, and the
memory of Anna Summers had made the image of the young girl sacred, but
the class uninteresting.

Such generalisations belonged, however, to an earlier stage of his
experience. The more he saw of life the more incalculable he found
it; and he had learned to yield to his impressions wi