a, "but the extraordinary thing is that I hadn't it
when first he knew me."

"He saw what was in you."

"He said the other day he saw nothing. I was too bad for words."

"Oh, I know all about that. He told me."

"What did he tell you?"

"That you were like a funny little unfledged bird, trying to fly
before its wing feathers were grown."

"I hadn't any. I hadn't anything of my own. Everything I have I owe
to him."

"Don't say that. Why should you pluck off all your beautiful
feathers to make a nest for his conceit?"

"Is he conceited?"

Freda said to herself, "After all, she doesn't count. She doesn't
know him."

Miss Nethersole smiled. "He's a male man, my dear. If you want him
to have an even higher idea of your genius than he has already, tell
him--tell him you owe it all to him."

"Ah," said Freda, "you don't know him."

"I have known him," said Miss Nethersole, "for fifteen years. I knew
him before he married."

She had proved incontestably the superiority of her knowledge. Freda
felt as if Miss Nethersole were looking at her to see how she would
take it. There was an appreciable moment in which she adjusted her
mind to the suddenness of the revelation. Then she told herself that
there was nothing in it that she had not reckoned with many times
before. It left her relations with Wilton Caldecott where they were.

There was nothing in it that could change for her the unique and
immaterial tie. She was even relieved by the certainty that it was
not Julia Nethersole, then, after all. She had an idea that she
would have grudged him to Julia Nethersole.

Julia was much too well-bred to show that she had the advantage. She
took it for granted that Miss Farrar was also acquainted with the
circumstances of Wilton Caldecott's marriage.

"That," said she, "is what makes him so extraordinarily
interesting."

"His marriage"--Freda hesitated. She wondered if Miss Nethersole
would really go into it.

"Some people's marriages are quite unilluminating. Wilton's, I
always think, is the key to his character, sometimes to his
conduct."

Freda held her breath. She saw that Miss Nethersole was about to go
in deep.

"He has suffered"--Miss Nethersole went on--"all his life, from an
over-developed sense of honor. He could see honor in situations
where you wouldn't have said there was the ghost of an obligation.
His marriage was not an affair of the heart. It was an affair of
honor. The woman--she's dead now-