d she turned to her roses with a blind
energy that threatened them root and runner.

"How did you happen to think of him at all?" continued Camilla
mischievously.

"He called on--Mrs. Craig this afternoon."

"I didn't know she knew him."

"They are related--distantly--I believe----"

"Oh," exclaimed Camilla. "I'm terribly sorry I spoke that way
about him, dear----"

"_I_ don't care what you say about him," returned Ailsa Paige
fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves;
resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley.

"Dear," she added gaily to Camilla, "come in and we'll have tea and
gossip, English fashion. And I'll tell you about my new duties at
the Home for Destitute Children--every morning from ten to twelve,
my dear, in their horrid old infirmary--the poor little
darlings!--and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish,
indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly
feeling--Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances
and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that
infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one
ailments distressing their tender little bodies."

But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less
communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an
unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.

"I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear," said
Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn--which indiscretion she
was unable to accomplish.

"Well," remarked Camilla, "the chances are that you've seen the
last of him if you showed it too plainly. Men don't come back when
a girl doesn't wish them to. Do they?"

After Camilla had gone, Ailsa roamed about the parlours, apparently
renewing her acquaintance with the familiar decorations.
Sometimes she stood at windows, looking thoughtfully into the empty
street; sometimes she sat in corners, critically surveying empty
space.

Yes, the chances were that he would scarcely care to come back. A
man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law's house,
anyway, nor in her own--a man who could appeal to a woman for a
favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason,
stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a
sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and
consideration which he asked for. . . . It was certainly well for
her that he should not return. . . . It would be better for her