proud; and during the last three months she
had indulged it passionately. The Dorsets' invitation to go abroad with
them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties;
and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off
problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had
arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a
postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed
for her only in the environment that had produced them; she did not mean
to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed
their background. She could not have remained in New York without
repaying the money she owed to Trenor; to acquit herself of that odious
debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosedale; but the accident
of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them
dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled
past them.

Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this
illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found
in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed
her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and
scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading
Theocritus by moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories,
with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual
superiority. But the weeks at Cannes and Nice had really given her more
pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of
making her own ascendency felt there, so that she found herself figuring
once more as the "beautiful Miss Bart" in the interesting journal devoted
to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions--all
these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory
the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped.

If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her
ability to meet them: it was characteristic of her to feel that the only
problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar.
Meanwhile she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had
adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think
that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess; and
if only she had seen any perfectly irrepr