ound as true as sorrow? Was she, indeed, as
Laura so ardently believed, capable of larger means, of finer issues,
and was her very audacity of speech but a kind of wild mourning for the
soul that she had killed? A month ago he would not have asked himself
the question, but his feeling for Laura had brought with it, though
unconsciously, a deeper feeling for life.

"All the same I wouldn't bore myself if I were you," he returned, "and I
don't think frankly men are worth it."

She laughed with an impatient jerk of her head. "Oh, it's easy to
moralise," she remarked, "but I have enough of that, you know, from
Laura."

"From Laura? Then she is with me?"

"She thinks so, but what does she know of life--she has never lived.
Why, she isn't even in the world with us, you see." A tender little
laugh escaped her. "I've even seen her," she added gayly, "read Plotinus
at her dressmaker's. She says he helps her to stand the trying on."

The picture amused him, and he allowed his fancy to play about it for a
moment. "I can't conceive of her surrendering to the vanities," he said
at last.

"You can't?" Gerty's tone had softened, though she still spoke merrily.
"Well, I call no woman safe until she's dead."

His imagination, always eager in pursuit of the elusive possibility,
sprang suddenly in the train of her suggestion, and he felt the sting of
a dangerous pleasure in his blood.

"Do you mean that it is only her outward circumstances, her worldly
ignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?" he asked.

"So she is indifferent?" enquired Gerty with a smile.

"To me--yes."

"Oh, I didn't know that--I suspected--" her pause was tantalising, and
she drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked.

"You suspected--" he repeated the words with the nervous irritation
which always seized him in moments of excitement.

"I honestly believed," she gave it to him with barely suppressed
amusement, "that she really disliked you."

His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while he
choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once
felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own.
"Did she tell you so?" he demanded hotly.

"Oh, dear, no--she wouldn't for the world."

"Then you're wrong," he said with dogged resolution; "I can make her
like me or not just as I choose."

"You can?" she looked lovely but incredulous.

"Why do you doubt it?"

"Because-