uncongenial, he can't get rid of her unless he is a brute; and I didn't
happen to like that sort of man."

"Like? I thought you said just now that you loved him."

"I don't think now that I did. I explained that a while ago."

"Why have you changed your mind?"

"I never knew a man to ask so many questions."

But before he left her he knew.

* * * * *

Edith anticipated pleasurably the sensation her engagement would make,
but did not announce it at once. She had a certain feminine
secretiveness which made her doubly enjoy a happiness undiluted by
publicity; moreover, some further deference was due to Carnath. She was
very happy, the more so as she had believed until a short while ago
that her strong temperamental possibilities were vaulted in her nature's
little church-yard. "Our hearts after first love are like our dead," she
thought; "they sleep until the hour of resurrection." Hedworth dominated
her, had taken her love rather than asked for it, and, although he was
jealous and exacting, she was haunted by the traditions of man's
mutability, and studied her resources as it had never occurred to her to
study them before. She found that the outer envelopes of her personality
could be made to shift with kaleidoscopic brilliancy, and except when
Hedworth needed repose--she had much tact--she treated him to these many
moods in turn. It is possible that she added to her fascination, but,
having won him without effort, she might have rested on her laurels. He
was deeply in love with her, and worried himself with presentiments of
what might happen before she would consent to name the wedding-day. Both
being children of worldly wisdom, however, they harlequined their
misgivings and were happy when together.

Fortunately for both, she was heavy-laden with femininity, and was
content to give all, and receive the little that man in the nature of
his life and inherited particles has to offer. She was satisfied to be
adored, desired, mentally appreciated. If his ego was always paramount,
his spiritual demands so imperious that he appropriated the full measure
of sympathy and comprehension that Nature has let loose for man and
woman, not caring to know anything of her beyond the fact that she was
the one woman in the world in whom he saw no fault, she was satisfied to
have it so. She was a clever woman, but not too clever; and their
chances of happiness were good.

And then a strange thing hap