n the ordinary
surroundings of her life were different from what they had been only
several hours before. She wanted to be alone--to retreat into herself in
search of a clearer knowledge, and even her voice sounded strangely
altered in her own ears.

"You look as if you had been frightened, Laura; what is it?" asked
Gerty, pressing her hand.

"It is nothing," returned Laura, with a glance; "it is only that my head
aches." She pressed her hands upon her temples, and the throbbing of her
pulses against her finger tips confirmed her words. When, after a few
sympathetic questions, they rose to go, she was aware all at once of a
great relief--a relief which seemed to her an affront to friendship so
devoted as theirs.

"Roger tells me that we are to have the new book on Wednesday," said Mr.
Wilberforce, as he stood looking down upon her with the peculiar insight
which belongs to the affection of age. Then it seemed to her suddenly
that he understood the cause of her disturbance and that there were both
pity and disappointment in his eyes.

"I hope so," she answered, smiling the first insincere smile of her
life, for even as she uttered the words she knew that she no longer felt
the old eager, consuming interest in her work, and that the making of
books appeared to her an employment which was tedious and without end.
Why, she wondered vaguely, had she devoted her whole life to a pursuit
in which there was so little of the pulsation of the intenser realities?
She felt at the instant as if a bandage had dropped from before her
eyes, and the fact that Kemper as an individual did not enter into her
thoughts in no wise lessened his tremendous moral effect upon her
awakening nature. Not one man, but life itself was making its appeal to
her, and for the first time she realised something of the intoxication
that might dwell in pleasure--in pleasure accepted solely as a pursuit,
as an end in and for itself alone. Then, a moment later, standing by her
desk in her room upstairs, she remembered, in an illuminating flash, the
look with which Kemper had parted from her at her door.

CHAPTER III

THE MOTH AND THE FLAME

Several weeks after this, on the day that Trent's first play was
accepted, he dropped in to Adams' office, where the editor was busily
giving directions about the coming _Review_.

"I know you aren't in a mood for interruptions," began the younger man,
in a voice which, in spite of his effort at control, sti