clings to that power which should rightly be in the hands of youth. And
to-night something in her heart said: "Give place! give place!" The fact
which she had noticed in connection with Charmian's face had suddenly
made something within her weep over the child, take herself to task.
There was still much impulse in Mrs. Mansfield. To-night a subtlety in
Charmian, which no man could have detected, set that impulse in a
generous and warm blaze; filled her with a wish to abdicate in the
child's favor, to make her the center of the evening's attention, the
source of the evening's conversation; to show Heath that Charmian could
be as interesting as herself and more attractive than she was.

The difficulty was to obtain the right response from Charmian. She had
learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to
pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize
that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well
as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared
to play the schoolgirl if she made much of her experience. Algiers meant
so much to her just then that she belittled Algiers in self-defense.

Heath was chilled by her curt remarks.

"Of course, it's dreadfully French!" she said. "I suppose the conquerors
wish to efface all the traces of the conquered as much as possible. I
quite understand their feelings. But it's not very encouraging to the
desirous tourist."

"Then you were disappointed?" said Heath.

"You should have gone to Bou-Saada," said Mrs. Mansfield. "You would
have seen the real thing there. Why didn't you?"

"Adelaide Shiffney started in such a hurry, before I had had time to see
anything, or recover from the horrors of yachting. You know how she
rushes on as if driven by furies."

There was a small silence. Charmian knew now that she was making the
wrong impression, that she was obstinately doing, being, all that was
unattractive to Heath. But she was governed by the demon that often
takes possession of girls who love and feel themselves unloved. The
demon forced her to show a moral unattractiveness that did not really
express her character. And realizing that she must be seeming rather
horrid in condemning her hostess and representing the trip as a failure,
she felt defiant and almost hard.

"Did you envy me?" she said to Heath, almost a little aggressively.

"Well, I thought you must be having a very interesting