in, she thought,
in a crisis of her life she had no one to depend on but herself. She
lifted her shoulders. No one was to blame, but there the fact was. They
urged you to cling and be guided, but when the pinch came, you had to act
for yourself. She had learned her lesson now. Henceforward she took her
own life over into her own hands.

She reviewed her past dependences. Her youth, with its dependence on her
father, particularly in matters of dress. She recalled her early
photographs with a shudder. Had she really dressed so badly or was it
only the change of fashion? And then her dependence on Joe Severance.
What could be more ridiculous than for a woman of her intelligence to
allow herself to be guided in everything by a man like Joe, who had
nothing himself but a certain shrewd masculinity? And now Vincent. She
was still under the spell of his superiority, but perhaps she would come
to judge him too. She had learned much from him. Perhaps she had learned
all he had to teach her. Her face looked as if it were carved out of some
smooth white stone.

CHAPTER X

After she had gone up-stairs, Mathilde went down again to telephone Pete
that she had made her decision. She went boldly snapping electric
switches, for her going was a sort of assertion of her right to
independent action. She would have hesitated even less if she had known
how welcome her news was, how he had suffered since their parting.

On going home from his interview with her, he found his mother dressing
to dine with Mr. Lanley, a party arranged before the unexpected arrival
of Mrs. Baxter. The only part of dressing that delayed Mrs. Wayne was her
hair, which was so long that the brushing of it took time. In this
process she was engaged when her son, in response to her answer, came
into her room.

"How is Mr. Farron?" she asked at once, and he, rather touched at the
genuineness of her interest, answered her in detail before her next
exclamation betrayed that it was entirely for the employer of Marty
Burke that she was solicitous. "Isn't it too bad he was taken ill just
now?" she said.

The bitterness and doubt from which Wayne was suffering were not emotions
that disposed him to confidence. He did not want to tell his mother what
he was going through, for the obvious and perhaps unworthy reason that it
was just what she would have expected him to go through. At the same time
a real deceit was involved in concealing it, and so, tipping his ch