it was the right one. The effect was sudden and unexpected, and
Beatrice looked at her almost fixedly, in undisguised admiration.

"Young then!" she exclaimed. "You are young now!"

"Less young than I was then," Unorna answered with a little sigh,
followed instantly by a smile.

"I am five and twenty," said Beatrice, woman enough to try and force a
confession from her new acquaintance.

"Are you? I would not have thought it--we are nearly of an age--quite,
perhaps, for I am not yet twenty-six. But then, it is not the years--"
She stopped suddenly.

Beatrice wondered whether Unorna were married or not. Considering the
age she admitted and her extreme beauty it seemed probable that she must
be. It occurred to her that the acquaintance had been made without any
presentation, and that neither knew the other's name.

"Since I am a little the younger," she said, "I should tell you who I
am."

Unorna made a slight movement. She was on the point of saying that she
knew already--and too well.

"I am Beatrice Varanger."

"I am Unorna." She could not help a sort of cold defiance that sounded
in her tone as she pronounced the only name she could call hers.

"Unorna?" Beatrice repeated, courteously enough, but with an air of
surprise.

"Yes--that is all. It seems strange to you? They called me so because I
was born in February, in the month we call Unor. Indeed it is strange,
and so is my story--though it would have little interest for you."

"Forgive me, you are wrong, It would interest me immensely--if you would
tell me a little of it; but I am such a stranger to you----"

"I do not feel as though you are that," Unorna answered with a very
gentle smile.

"You are very kind to say so," said Beatrice quietly.

Unorna was perfectly well aware that it must seem strange, to say the
least of it, that she should tell Beatrice the wild story of her life,
when they had as yet exchanged barely a hundred words. But she cared
little what Beatrice thought, provided that she could interest her. She
had a distinct intention in making the time slip by unnoticed, until it
should be late.

She related her history, so far as it was known to herself, simply and
graphically, substantially as it has been already set forth, but with an
abundance of anecdote and comment which enhanced the interest and at the
same time extended its limits, interspersing her monologues with remarks
which called for an answer and which served as tests of