gaged in thrusting her will against
the will of the world, Miss Bennett felt the same unreasoning pity--pity
which rendered her weak in her own defense when any dispute arose
between them. She and Lydia had been having a scene now; only a little
scene--hardly more than a discussion.

Morson saw it clearly when he came in after luncheon to get the coffee
cups, although a complete and decorous silence greeted his entrance. He
saw it in the way in which his young employer was standing, as erect as
an Indian, looking slantingly down her cheek at her companion. Miss
Bennett was sitting on the sofa with her feet in their high-heeled satin
slippers crossed, and she was slipping the rings nervously up and down
her fine, thin fingers.

She was a small, well-made woman, to whom prettiness had come with her
gray hair. The perfection of all her appointments, which might once have
been interpreted as the vanity of youth, turned out to be a settled
nicety that stood her in good stead in middle life and differentiated
her at fifty-five--a neat, elegant little figure among her
contemporaries.

The knowledge that he was interrupting a discussion did not hurry Morson
any more than the faintest curiosity delayed him. He brushed up the
hearth, turned a displaced chair, collected the cups on his tray and
left the room at exactly the same pace at which he had entered it. He
had known many scenes in his day.

As soon as the door closed behind him Miss Bennett said: "Of course, if
you meant you don't want me to ask my friends to your house you are
perfectly within your rights, but I could not stay with you, Lydia."

"You know I don't mean that, Benny," said the girl without either anger
or apology in her voice. "I'm delighted to have you have anyone at all
when I'm not here and anyone amusing when I am. The point is that those
old women were tiresome. They bored you and you knew that they were
going to bore me. You sacrificed me to make a Roman holiday for them."

Miss Bennett could not let this pass.

"You should feel it an honor--a woman like Mrs. Galton, whose work among
the female prisoners of this----"

"Noble women, noble women, I have no doubt, but bores, and it makes me
feel sick, literally sick, to be bored."

"Don't be coarse, Lydia."

"Sick--here," said Lydia with a sharp dig of her long fingers on her
diaphragm. "Let's be clear about this, Benny. I can't stand having my
own tiresome friends about, and I will not put up