lady and sitting in an hotel--with men like butlers waiting. It's
the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner
than that!"

I can see her now pleading with me, speaking with a frankness as
bright and amazing as the dawn of the first great morning.

"It wasn't all mean," I said slowly, after a pause.

"No!" They spoke together.

"But a woman chooses more than a man does," Nettie added. "I saw
it all in little bright pictures. Do you know--that jacket--there's
something------ You won't mind my telling you? But you won't now!"

I nodded, "No."

She spoke as if she spoke to my soul, very quietly and very
earnestly, seeking to give the truth. "Something cottony in that
cloth of yours," she said. "I know there's something horrible in
being swung round by things like that, but they did swing me round.
In the old time--to have confessed that! And I hated Clayton--and
the grime of it. That kitchen! Your mother's dreadful kitchen!
And besides, Willie, I was afraid of you. I didn't understand you
and I did him. It's different now--but then I knew what he meant.
And there was his voice."

"Yes," I said to Verrall, making these discoveries quietly, "yes,
Verrall, you have a good voice. Queer I never thought of that
before!"

We sat silently for a time before our vivisected passions.

"Gods!" I cried, "and there was our poor little top-hamper of
intelligence on all these waves of instinct and wordless desire,
these foaming things of touch and sight and feeling, like--like
a coop of hens washed overboard and clucking amidst the seas."

Verrall laughed approval of the image I had struck out. "A week
ago," he said, trying it further, "we were clinging to our chicken
coops and going with the heave and pour. That was true enough a
week ago. But to-day------?"

"To-day," I said, "the wind has fallen. The world storm is over.
And each chicken coop has changed by a miracle to a vessel that
makes head against the sea."

Section 4

"What are we to do?" asked Verrall.

Nettie drew a deep crimson carnation from the bowl before us, and
began very neatly and deliberately to turn down the sepals of its
calyx and remove, one by one, its petals. I remember that went
on through all our talk. She put those ragged crimson shreds in a
long row and adjusted them and readjusted them. When at last I was
alone with these vestiges the pattern was still incomplete.

"Well," said I, "the matter seems fairly simple.