h as one can out of life, I
suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"

"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his
elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of
success," he said, "is personal freedom."

"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"

"From everything--from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from
all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the
spirit--that's what I call success."

She leaned forward with a responsive flash. "I know--I know--it's
strange; but that's just what I've been feeling today."

He met her eyes with the latent sweetness of his. "Is the feeling so rare
with you?" he said.

She blushed a little under his gaze. "You think me horribly sordid, don't
you? But perhaps it's rather that I never had any choice. There was no
one, I mean, to tell me about the republic of the spirit."

"There never is--it's a country one has to find the way to one's self."

"But I should never have found my way there if you hadn't told me."

"Ah, there are sign-posts--but one has to know how to read them."

"Well, I have known, I have known!" she cried with a glow of eagerness.
"Whenever I see you, I find myself spelling out a letter of the sign--and
yesterday--last evening at dinner--I suddenly saw a little way into your
republic."

Selden was still looking at her, but with a changed eye. Hitherto he had
found, in her presence and her talk, the aesthetic amusement which a
reflective man is apt to seek in desultory intercourse with pretty women.
His attitude had been one of admiring spectatorship, and he would have
been almost sorry to detect in her any emotional weakness which should
interfere with the fulfilment of her aims. But now the hint of this
weakness had become the most interesting thing about her. He had come on
her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and
altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm.
THAT IS HOW SHE LOOKS WHEN SHE IS ALONE! had been his first thought; and
the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced. It
was the danger-point of their intercourse that he could not doubt the
spontaneity of her liking. From whatever angle he viewed their dawning
intimacy, he could not see it as part of her scheme of life; and to be
the unforeseen element in a career so accurately planned was stimulating
even to a man who had