hink, that
made the difference?"

That he had never really known.

"Oh, well, I suppose you're stronger, you know; and things are
different."

"Things?" she repeated. Her lips parted and closed, as if she had
been about to say something, and recalled it with a sharp indrawing
of her breath.

"And so," she said presently, "you think that was it?"

"It may have been. Anyhow, you mustn't go getting ill."

"I don't think," she said, "there's any need. But don't be
frightened. It won't go away."

"What won't?"

"The gift."

They laughed again. It was their own name for it.

"I wasn't thinking of it. I was thinking of you."

"It's the same thing," said she. "No. It won't go. It can't go. I've
got it fast."

He rose. He looked down on her; he seemed to hesitate, to consider.

"I wonder," he said, "if I might ask my friend, Miss Nethersole, to
call on you? She's Mrs. Dysart's niece."

She consented, and with a terse good night he left her.

She, too, wondered and considered. She knew that she would some day
have to reckon with his life, with the world that knew him, with the
women whom he knew.

II

Freda and Miss Nethersole had met several times before the
remarkable conversation that made them suddenly intimate.

That she would have, sooner or later, some remarkable conversation
with Miss Nethersole was an idea that had dawned upon Freda from the
first. But until the hour struck for them their acquaintance had
been distant.

It had the fascination of deep distance. Freda had not been sure
that she desired to break the charm. It seemed somehow to hold her
safe. From what danger she would have found it hard to say, when
Miss Nethersole covered her with so large and soft a wing. Still,
they had come no nearer to the friendship which the older woman had
offered as the end of their approaches.

It was as if Miss Nethersole were also bound under the charm. When
Freda allowed herself to meditate profoundly she divined that what
drew them on and held them back was an uncertainty regarding Wilton
Caldecott. Neither knew in what place the other really held him. The
first day they met each had searched, secretly, the other's face for
some betrayal of his whereabouts; each, it had seemed to Freda, had
shrunk from finding what she looked for; shrunk even more from
owning that there might be anything to find.

And he had hoped that she would "like Julia."

If reticence were required of them, Freda felt tha