tural, so unamazing, like a conversation between two
persons in a dream. They had both seemed so ripe for their hour
that, when it struck, it brought no sense of the unusual. Only when
she lit her lamp in her room, and received the full shock of the old
intimate reality, did it occur to her that it was, after all, for
Julia Nethersole, a rather singular outpouring. The more she thought
of it the more startling it seemed--Julia's flinging off of the
reticence that had wrapped her round. Freda was specially appalled
by the audacity with which Julia had dragged Wilton Caldecott's
history into the light of day. Her own mind had always approached it
shyly and tenderly, with a sort of feeling that, after all, perhaps
she would rather not know. To Freda Julia seemed to have taken leave
suddenly of her senses, to have abandoned all propriety. One did, at
supreme moments, leave many things behind one; but Freda was not
aware that any moment in their intercourse had yet counted as
supreme.

Could Julia have meant anything by it? If so, what was it that she
precisely meant? The beginning of their conversation provided no
clue to its end. What possible connection could there be between
her, Freda's gift, such as it was, and Wilton Caldecott's marriage?

But as she pieced together, painfully, the broken threads she saw
that it did somehow hang together. She recalled that there had been
something almost ominous in the insistence with which Julia had held
her to her gift. Julia's manner had conveyed her disinclination to
acknowledge Wilton's part in it, her refusal to regard him as
indispensable in the case. She had implied, with the utmost possible
delicacy, that it would be well for Freda if she could contrive to
moderate her enthusiasm, to be a little less grateful; to cultivate,
in a word, her independence.

It was then that she had gone down into her depths. And emerging,
braced and bracing from the salt sea, she had landed Freda safe on
the high ledge, where she was henceforth to stand solitary, guarding
her gift.

It was, in short, a friendly warning to the younger woman to keep
her head if she wished to keep their friend.

Freda remembered her first disgraceful fear of Julia, her feeling
that Julia would presently take something--she hardly knew
what--away from her. That came of letting her imagination play too
freely round Wilton Caldecott's friend. What was there to alarm her
in the candid Julia? Wasn't it as if Julia